bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A New Apostolate?
Authors: Pepler Conrad 
Published: July 2007

It is often dangerous to apply the conduct of the past as a norm to the present. Only too often a facile parallel between days gone by and the present has led to an absurdly literal equation between the two, as we may observe sometimes in the use made of precedent. At the same time fresh light may occasionally be thrown on a situation by indulging in such fancies without intending too rigid an application. It is a fanciful comparison of this sort which we set down here as a feeler, searching out a possible method of regaining the proletariat for Christ, and so of counteracting the powerful appeal which Communism makes to our age.The facts of St. Dominic's life and vocation are generally known, and here we wish only to draw attention to certain aspects of it. When St. Dominic came to Languedoc, on his way to negotiate a marriage with a foreign princess on behalf of his Sovereign, he found the Church hard pressed by an enemy powerful because popular. One of the causes of the popularity of Albigensianism was the apparently severe interpretation of Christian life by the leaders of the movement, and the people, as always, were profoundly impressed at the sight of rigid austerity linked with a burning zeal. The Church had, of course, attempted to save her people from the ravages of the heresy, and had sent out her emissaries in the sombre yet rich state appropriate to their condition as bishops, abbots and priests. But if such attire and accoutrement was the due of these defenders of the faith, it turned out to be a hindrance to their fight for truth since it contrasted ill, in the minds of the populace, with the ostentatiously ascetic lives of the Albigensian leaders.
The Task of The Living Church
Authors: Dominican A German 
Published: July 2007

The sublime fact of being members of the essentially living Church, bestowed upon us in Holy Baptism, implies a task with regard to our people. The Living World-Church wills, through us her living members, to build our German people into a living Church. There is very little sense to start by drawing up magnificent plans for the re-conquering of the de-christianized populations for the Church, although it goes without saying that this re-conquest remains an important task to be accomplished by us. But in order to achieve it successfully, another task is even more important, viz., the total Christianization of those who are still living in the Living Church. Re-christianization of the estranged population is only possible by means of total Christianization of the Christian community itself. In conferring together as to the method of building up our contemporary German people into a Living Church, ways and means will have to be discussed, and in the first place, how to make each one of us into a Living Member of the Church.By far the most important element in this personal transformation into a Living Church will be the Life-preservation and the Life-intensification by means of the Holy Eucharist.
Spain—Persecutions Old and New
Authors: Gumbley Walter 
Published: July 2007

The English Press for some years past has consistently misjudged the Spanish people and our Press of to-day, with scanty exceptions, is not exempt from this unhappy phase of English journalism. But however complacent we may hitherto have been in accepting the views of our journalists, we must feel something of a shock in the revelations of the Spanish Hierarchy who have so effectually drawn aside the curtain concealing things deliberately hidden from us.The document they have published is one couched in calm language uttered without either bitterness or rancour. It is a plain statement subscribed by 48 prelates ruling or administering 54 of the 60 dioceses of Spain, men on the spot speaking from personal experience. It opens with a clear account of the injustice of the 1936 elections, when through “the lawlessness of a Government, which, in defiance of the will of the people, set up a political machinery in direct opposition to the majority of the nation, the Right, with a majority of more than a million votes over the Left, was given 118 deputies less than the Popular Front. For this purpose the votes of entire provinces had been entirely cancelled.”Of the utmost importance is their reply to the objection that “Whatever were the Reds’ excesses, the fact remains that, had Franco not rebelled, the hundreds and thousands of priests who were assassinated would have been saved for their spiritual work.” The Bishops’ answer is: “As witnesses of the position at the moment when the conflict arose, we are unable to agree with the statement. The exact opposite is the truth.
Russian Sophiology
Authors: Danzas J. 
Published: July 2007

Russian religious thought is experiencing an acute crisis. The mysticism which, in pre-revolutionary days, greatly interested certain Russian intellectual circles has now reached its full development among thinkers grouped around the Russian Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris; a “new school of theology” is even being spoken of. Occasionally this group has used the term neo-gnosis, or orthodox gnosis, to describe their particular mystical tendencies. There is no question of a rupture with the Orthodox Church, but of a broadening of her doctrinal teaching, by the introduction of conceptions purported to belong to her traditions, though discarded by the official Church. So, in the name of these traditions, Fr. Bulgakov, head of the Institute, expounds a so-called sophiological doctrine based upon the conception of a hypostatized divine Wisdom, idea (in the Platonic sense) of the creation co-etemal with the Creator.This doctrine is taught in several important works of which The Light Undimmed was written before the author's ordination. Fr. Bulgakov has subsequently developed his thought in a number of books, mostly published in Paris: The Burning Bush, The Friend of the Bridegroom, The Ladder of Jacob, Icons and their Veneration, and especially The Lamb of God, which forms the first part of a work upon theandrism intended to epitomize the writer’s sophiological teaching. We must add an essay on Hypostasis and Hypostatisation published in Prague, also a series of articles in Putj, Russian philosophical periodical isued in Paris, some of which are noteworthy as they explain the writer’s intellectual evolution.
Newman and Pater
Authors: F. S. B.  
Published: July 2007

John Henry Newman stood alone among the leaders of the Oxford Movement; he possessed that elevation of mind which helps men to acquire those rare attributes of spiritual cultivation making for the fulfilment of life in Divine terms. Spiritual cultivation demands many qualities, and among the more prominent may be discerned courage, strength of will, sensitiveness, courtesy, kindliness, refinement and enlightened reticence. The last the rarest of all and the crown of the edifice. It is no rhetorical exaggeration to urge that all of these reposed in the character of Newman.Newman was logical in matters of Religion; he combined the qualities of the scholar and the saint; he was an intellect and a master of the spiritual life. A gentleman deeply read in English literature and with whom I have had the privilege of written discussion on the character of Newman, noted in one of my papers that he regarded it as singular that Newman, more than the other outstanding figures of the Oxford Movement, should have possessed the logical faculty in a degree unusual among men of definitely artistic temperament, as his perfect literary style shews him to have been. My literary acquaintance went on to say that although the criticism and comparisons Froude makes in Volume IV, “Short-Studies,” have encountered much hostile criticism he still thought that Newman was shewn in his proper magnitude as against Keble’s wistful sentiment and Pusey’s hesitation. Newman’s mastery of spiritual values shewed that he was well versed in the management of conduct.
“Right” and “Left”
Authors: Maritain Jacques 
Published: July 2007

We Christians of 1937 are the spectators of a terrible drama, a drama which confronts our consciences with agonizing problems. This drama is the disastrous struggle for power between two rival complex ideologies which have come to be known as “Right” and “Left.” Already this conflict is sapping the life-blood of Spain; already it is breeding rancour and hatred of brother for brother throughout the civilized world, and threatens the very foundations of civilization with irreparable disaster.Elsewhere (in my Lettre sur l’Indépendance) I have sketched some of the characteristic traits which seem to me, as a student of philosophy and of current political trends, to be the distinguishing features of “Right” and “Left.”To those observations one might add that in concrete experience, which is for the most part in actual fact an experience of misrepresentation (for misrepresentation pertains to man and leaves him only at the price of supreme intellectual discipline—omnis homo mendax), in concrete experience, I say, a particular and typical misrepresentation, closely bound up with the complex question which we are considering, makes its appearance.
John Wesley and Christian Peace
Authors: McNabb Vincent 
Published: July 2007

Some little time ago the present writer was ordered by his Prior to speak at an Inter-denominational Anti-War demonstration on Hampstead Heath. The demonstration was no doubt due to a widespread opinion that, all physical and political expedients for ensuring peace having failed, the only hope for peace would be through moral means. This opinion bore on its face the outline of sanity and almost of inevitability. Indeed so sane and inevitable did it seem, and does it still seem, that even men who profess to believe that religion is the opium of the people are often found blaming the ministers of religion for not bringing in, as by a miracle, the reign of peace.The difficulty I felt in being obedient to the command of obedience was not a distaste for any command. Still less was it a disagreement with the belief that no physical nor political expedients but only moral expedients will end war. But I felt a great disinclination to speak on an interdenominational peace platform; and that, firstly, because of an inevitable conclusion and, secondly, because of an undeniable observation.The inevitable conclusion was that if war could be ended only by moral means the chief agents in ending it could only be the moral expert or professionals, namely the ministers of religion.The undeniable observation was that nowhere was there such a state of war and such a need of peace as in the sphere of religion.
Christian Spain
Authors: Quinn Edward 
Published: July 2007

One of the minor tragedies of the Spanish Civil War lies in the fact that Professor Dempf of Bonn was not able to give at Santander in 1936 his projected course of lectures on “Christian Political Philosophy in Spain.” It is however no small compensation that he should have published these lectures, which are thereby communicated at present to all who understand German and, it is to be hoped, later to English-speaking readers.And behind this there is a greater hope yet. In reading the book one cannot refrain from asking again and again, “Will Spain which has so magnificent a Christian tradition, which has produced so many of the world’s greatest political theorists, succeed this time after the agony of revolution and martyrdom in realizing the noblest ideas in practice and returning to the authentic Christian and Catholic outlook in politics?” Or will it be as before—a noble idealism existing side by side with an unintelligent hard realism personified in the classical figures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza? Dr. Dempf is content to remind us of the historic Spanish paradox, to express the hope that the Spanish people will rediscover themselves after the thunders of the civil war and then, as if preparing the way for return, to indicate with the insight and conciseness of a master the teaching of the great Spanish political theorists. For only by returning to the ideas built up by these men will Spain be able to re-establish a healthy political life.
Russian Sophiology
Authors: Danzas J. 
Published: July 2007

It is commonly thought that gnostic systems are grounded upon a dualist conception of the origin of the Universe, but this is subject to question. Gnosticism was the source of many religious and philosophical movements in nowise marked by dualism, suffice it to recall Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and later the mediaeval adepts of secret teachings who, through many perversions, were seeking for the one Divine Absolute. Dualistic elements, more or less marked in different gnostic systems, co-existed with a monistic element often predominant.In Christianity pure dualism, i.e., the essential and primordial opposition between two distinct principles, has existed only within Manicheism which owed its origin to Persian Mazdeism. Before Manes this Persian dualism had only an indirect influence upon the great syncretistic movement of the Hellenic world. Actually this term—dualism— is applicable only there where the principle of evil is considered to be in its origin independent of its opposite—the principle of good. In the gnostic systems the evil principle is the outcome of a slow evolution proceeding from a unique First Principle. These systems are essentially monistic, differing one from another precisely by the way they conceive this creative evolution resulting in an inferior world and its final reintegration into the Godhead. The ancient gnosis, with its multiple systems, was an effort to connect the actuality of the material world with the divine transcendency. Modern Russian thinkers are concerned with the same problems. Gnosticism originated outside Christianity, but borrowed its soteriological doctrine as a basis for speculations closer to pantheism than to dualism, and it is within this pantheist evolution that the idea of Sophia, link between the unknowable and the actual, originated.
Advance in Retrospect
Authors: Tindal-Atkinson Aelwin 
Published: July 2007

The business of preparation is complete. The men know what work lies in front of them, if life is spared, before the sun, now setting behind the steep roofs and towers of Bailleul, rises again above the fortified ridge of Messines, still held by the enemy. As the column leaves its high resting place on Mount Ravetsburg and winds on towards the darkening East, a ground mist veils the sordid straggle of wreckage in the valley, where heaped debris of earth, metal and smouldering timber had once been trains of linked trucks loaded with explosives. A chance bomb dropped from the air yesterday had blown wagons, wheels, rails, sheds and men skywards in blasts of flame.The thick dust stirred by the movement of many men fills eyes, mouth and nose, for the grass underfoot that once carpeted the country lane has been crushed out of life, and the earth that fed it has been powdered by the tread of innumerable feet. Yet the June evening is still redolent with hawthorn; and the scent of the hedgerows softens the acrid impact of sweat. Shellfire has not yet violated the virginity of trees in full leaf; and the eye lingers on their shapeliness as if to stamp their form on the mind. Within an hour the memory of them will seem as fantastic as the prospect of the trees further ahead which stand with stark limbless trunks pared of life-giving foliage by the engines of war.
A Fifty Years Plan
Authors: Walsh R. P. 
Published: July 2007

We all know that Great Britain is suffering from some ill. We are all becoming rather tired of all the examinations of this fact and of all the cures. Generally we find that the “doctors” are only concerned with bolstering up present economic order by removing the more glaring evils. We find Communists and Fascists all opposing capitalism with another form of capitalism in which they will be the capitalists.Very rarely do we find anyone questioning the fundamental issues on which Great Britain and the Empire have been built.We know we have lost a great proportion of our export trade, but we hope to recover it. Few of us ask if this is possible.Now we have a distributist examining the sick—Great Britain, and wisely pointing out the fallacies of the treatment prescribed by other doctors. In the first part of this booklet we find all the causes; “Small minority possessing property and the vast proletarianised majority ...” “The deadly effect of urbanization possesses a profound biological significance.” “Only a minute fraction of the population is engaged in work on the land ...” “England’s industrial monopoly is on the wane ...” “The beginning of a process which will end in England possessing but a fraction of its present population; and of that fraction, half will be mentally deficient ...”
Work and Property
Authors: Gill Eric 
Published: July 2007

Work and Property To the Editor of Blackfriars,Sir,—Fr. Ceolfrid Heron’s very valuable and appreciative article in the August Blackfriars, on my book Work and Property, invites a short comment. Misunderstanding seems to arise from my advocacy of “collective ownership” by the “workers.” It is thought that such advocacy is out of line with adverse criticism of industrialism and the “leisure state.” People ask: how can you be in favour of collectivism and of a return to responsible workmanship at the same time? How can you believe in distributed property and also acquiesce in industrialism? The answer is easy. I believe in workers’ ownership of means of production and distribution. I believe in the village blacksmith (still one or two left) owning his own workshop and tools. I believe in the farmer owning his own farm and implements.But what about the Great Western Railway? That also is an affair of workmen. Is it a bad thing? Is it immoral? Does the Pope refuse to go by train? And what about all the other great industrial enterprises? I may not like the kind of world they imply. I may be able to show that it is all wrong and leading to war and disaster—cheap amusements and conveniences, vulgarity on every hand, not to mention the corruption of family life, the destruction of humane culture and an increasing madness of international rivalry. But what of it? Does any theologian of importance condemn railway trains or telephones or tinned food? Does any theologian condemn the factory system, as such, or say anything against the wage system? As far as my information goes theologians ask for no more than good trade unionists do—higher wages, shorter hours, better canteens, insurance against ill-health and unemployment and possibly a share of the profits large enough to enable employees to buy a bit of property (if there's any for sale).
Lagrange on Orphism
Authors: McNabb Vincent 
Published: July 2007

On reading the quiet, always scholarly and often humorous pages of a veteran’s book on a difficult subject, it is hard to know whether it is the book or the writer that holds us most. The bibliography given in Pére Lagrange’s study of Orphism suggests the obvious remark that the lyre of the Thracian god—if he be a god and if he be a Thracian—still renders spell-bound but not dumb-founded a throng of living beings.Needless to say this latest writer on the Thracian god has not given his time and scholarship to one of those pagan myths that were hardly more than premonitory symptoms of the present world-wide outbreak of fiction. Pére Lagrange has been by nature and choice so authentic a defender of the Ark that even in his lightest words he has been at least brushing off annoying and persistent flies.In this remote matter of Orpheus and Orphism the assailants of the Ark are not a company of irregulars. Loisy, Reinach, Boulanger and others are worthy of Pére Lagrange’s best defence, and le beau sabreur, even in his old age, does not disappoint us. If we were allowed to summarize Pére Lagrange’s summary of his own view we would say: In Thrace, in Greece, in Crete, the (orphic) religion of Zagreus was mingled with the Egyptian cult of Osiris. About the seventh century before Christ this fusion of Zagreus and Osiris was further mixed with the cult of Dionysos which had come from Phrygia and Lydia to Greece through Thrace. If Dionysos (or Bacchus) was an element of joy and even intoxication, the Zagreus-Osiris blend was an element of fear and even of pessimism. Indeed the original Orphism, as distinct from its Dionysian element, was not the wine but the vinegar of life.
The Dominican Nuns of Saint-Jacques
Authors: Toynbee Jocelyn M. C. 
Published: July 2007

Is intellectual work compatible with the religious life? According to St. Thomas Aquinas a life of contemplation and asceticism normally demands it. Intellectual activity is closely bound up with contemplation and the teaching apostolate. Study is not just idle curiosity; for it springs from a love of all truths included in the Supreme Truth, in the Being Whose essence is Truth: God. Love of God demands contemplation, and contemplation, in its turn, demands study. Whosoever loves God desires to know Him and to explore the secrets of His infinite perfection; and without study it is impossible to have a clear and intelligent faith. Again, if contemplation should express and complete itself in the mission to teach divine truth to others, a knowledge of religious doctrine, as complete as possible is obviously essential.The Order of Friars Preachers has so thoroughly understood the importance of intellectual work that it regards the latter as a fundamental necessity and has placed it, alongside of the Divine Office, first in the hierarchy of means. It was St. Dominic’s wish that his sons should be sufficiently detached from primary material interests to apply themselves, without intermission, to study, prayer and preaching. The Order of Preachers was, in fact, the first religious group to make organised and collective study an essential part of the religious life. The Friars Preachers were students; and there has been no modification of this characteristic of theirs during the course of the centuries.
The Way of Truth
Authors: Carpenter Hilary J. 
Published: July 2007

Though it is eminently true that there is but one way for all men through the tangled wilderness of human life, namely the way that has been opened and trodden by Him Who declared: I am, the Way, nevertheless there is a sense in which it is true to say that the ways of God are as diversified as the individuality of those who seek Him. All are Members of the Mystical Body of Christ, but the hierarchy of place and function within that Body comprehends, and indeed demands, a variety of state and action that covers all the needs and capacities of human nature. It is not a difference of way, but rather a difference of emphasis. In its essentials the Christian life and the Christian ideals are the same for all men—union with God through union with the God-man; but in its variety of emphasis the Christ-life which men are called to lead is a jewel of a myriad facets.It is in this sense of emphasis, therefore, that we may speak of Dominican spirituality as the Way of Truth, without wishing to appropriate that quality exclusively to the Order of St. Dominic. The word Veritas, the distinctive motto of the Order, undoubtedly sums up the ideal which St. Dominic realized in his own life and set before the members of his Order as the essential means of their sanctification and of their apostolate. Into how great a tree this mustard seed can grow is made strikingly clear in a notable work of the late Père Joret, O.P., which has recently appeared in its English translation.