bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Catholicism and Civilization
Authors: De Munnynck Mark 
Published: July 2007

It is thought in certain circles that these two words are the exact antithesis of each other. The persecution of Catholics is called ‘kulturkampf’; and people do not hesitate to say that the prosperity of certain countries dates from the time when they repudiated the Catholic Faith. We are too used to such opinions to be roused by them. Ignorance of Catholic doctrine, usually involuntary, thus once more gives rise to an error, which becomes an injustice. We may surprise certain people when we say :—(i) That Catholicism insists on civilization and progress as a duty;(2) That the Catholic Church is the most effectual instrument, and most sure guarantee for progressive civilization.What is Civilization?Philosophers and sociologists are on the horns of a dilemma when they consider the nature of civilization. They have complicated the problem by indictments on the subject of ‘Kultur’ and civilization. They say that civilization is nothing else but the help that social man is always giving to nature so that man can live better and better. The expansion of life—by man’s government of nature, by the enriching of his intellectual life, by his artistic, economic and industrial works, by the close connection of the finite with the Infinite—these are the ends and the limits of civilization.Civilization is a religious duty.It is enough to have defined civilization, to see that continual effort towards a higher civilization is not only a tendency of human nature; it is equally a religious duty.God created us. He created us for Himself. We exist for God. He is the only end and explanation of our life. All our efforts should be towards God.
Scottish Baronial
Authors: Blaikie Murdoch W. G. 
Published: July 2007

A Noble Style in ArchitectureThe art which endures is that which is greatly distinctive, besides being beautiful. Waiving the first endeavours of primitive man, for these doings are far too remote to be seen clearly, it may be asserted with complete assurance, that never yet did a school of artists ply their craft, who did not begin by relying on a senior school. A very long page would be needful, whereon to show forth the debts which France owed, on the one hand to Italy, on the other to the Low Countries. And if the Greek achievement was fully as individual as the French, in its early stages Hellenic art tells clearly of discipleship of Egypt and Assyria. The architecture called Scottish Baronial is notably among those things, which combine distinctiveness with beauty. But in approaching a tribute to this work, it behoves to remember that it could not have from the start its markedly idiosyncratic temper. Who were the preceptors of the initial artists in the formula?There is widespread the idea that the Franco-Scottish alliance originated with the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Dauphin. But the league was ancient on that event, and it would seem to have been David I, crowned King of Scots in 1124, who first brought about intimate relations between his compatriots and the French. Caring before all else for things ecclesiastical, he was founder of most of the Scottish abbeys; and one of his actions was to bring to his dominions a group of French monks who were skilled in building. Thus it was normal that soon there should stand revealed, alike in churches and castles in Scotland, an affinity with French architecture.
The Alleged Absurdity of Algebra
Authors: Temple G. 
Published: July 2007

Fidelia Vulnera AmantisIn the September number of Blackfriars Father McNabb has attempted to trace the influence of Cartesian Doubt in the development of modern algebra. Now just as philosophy must not be identified with the fallacies of philosophers, so mathematics must not be identified with the mistakes of mathematicians, nor algebra with the absurdities of algebraists. To make such an identification betokens lack of knowledge of the subject under discussion. It is this nescience of modern algebra which vitiates the strictures passed by Father McNabb.There are treatises on algebra which give a most unsatisfactory account of complex numbers, just as there are treatises on the Eucharist which give an unsatisfactory account of its sacrificial nature. But neither algebra nor theology is invalidated by the inadequacy of its exposition.The article by Father McNabb affords an illustration of the lamentable lack of understanding between philosophers and mathematicians. A mathematician taking up the study of philosophy labours under the well-known disabilities due to the difference in the nature of proof demanded in each discipline. A philosopher taking up the study of mathematics is bewildered by the many meanings which the same mathematical term may possess in different branches of study. Thus the word ‘number’ may mean a signless integer, a positive or negative integer, a fraction, an irrational number, a complex number, a matrix, an operation. All these are distinct species of number and a mathematician, writing for mathematicians, often fails to state explicitly to which species he refers. Thus’ the statement that there exists no number whose square is equal to —i requires to be elucidated by a definition of the word ‘number.’ The statement remains true for the first four species of number mentioned above, but is false for the last three species.
Alice Meynell
Authors: Delany Bernard 
Published: July 2007

It is but to repeat the general verdict to say that Miss Viola Meynell has written a worthy memoir of her mother. She has been wise in avoiding the expansive, exhaustive, two-volumed, official biography. Her book is a memoir, a reminder, a brief record of things memorable; her aim is nothing more pretentious than to give fleeting glimpses, lively sketches, running commentaries which enlighten by flashes the rare life and work of her subject. A daughter is not always considered the one best qualified to write the Life of her mother : family affection might stress the unimportant things, discretion might suppress essential features, filial piety might withhold a perfect portrait. But Miss Meynell has kept in an excelling manner the balance between reverence and unreserve, and one may ask— knowing well how the question would be answered—Who else could have done the work better? Love is blind—perhaps sometimes; but more often love is keen-sighted and, according to the inspired text, love rejoiceth with the truth. Anyhow, it seems clear that the intimacy of family affection, far from handicapping Miss Meynell in her task, has actually proved to be her pre-eminent qualification in revealing and interpreting her mother.Alice Meynell has been hailed as ‘beyond challenge the most eminent woman writer since George Eliot and Christina Rossetti.’ Your wife’s prose, wrote Coventry Patmore to Wilfrid Meynell, ‘is the finest that was ever written, and none but kindred genius can see how great it is .... it is the test of capacity in the reader for the understanding of what prose is ... . If I were you I should go mad with pride and joy.’
Admonition
Authors: Maynard Theodore 
Published: July 2007

If clean thy heart, no bird’sSweet voice shall shrill in vain;And quick shall be thine ear for words The woods sing after rain.No willow in the wind Shall bend and thou not see—O sensitive and happy mind!—Glow earth and sky for thee.No horse shall arch his neck And thou not dream of Troy;And fluttering doves for thee bedeck Venus and her Blind Boy.No star shall ever shine Save over Bethlehem;Each rose shall bloom the Rose Divine;Each bud from Jesse’s stem.Scour but thy spirit clear Of the world’s sensual rust;Keep heart and mind and eye and ear Sweet, candid, joyous, just.Theodore Maynard.
The Parting Guest
Authors: Gray John 
Published: July 2007

Of all human situations, that perhaps which marks the end of a visit is the most difficult to define. Its ceremonial contains elements which cannot have varied greatly since the beginning; and yet it must, and does without hypocrisy, appear to be special to this leave taking, isolated from all others. Upon humble door-steps, and where even neither door nor step has been, ritual which is forever associated with ancient breeding observes its due development, the note of slight fatigue, the scarcely perceptible smile. There is no margin for criticism; for all that is evil or less perfect has been eliminated, while reticent benevolence pervades the rite.A barrier as of golden gossamer, exquisite in its tenuity, descends; and it is at the same time a mutual screen to cover the nakedness of whatever regret, awkwardness, relief might humanly be present; restoring solemnity; preserving the sacredness of hospitality, recalling its noble etymology. Sooner or later, seldom or often, each has stood on one side or the other of this imagined partition.
The Cardinal Duke of York
Authors: Speaight Hugh 
Published: July 2007

Henry Stuart was born in 1725. He died in 1807 in his eighty-third year. The birth of his father, the Old Pretender, had been the occasion of James the Second’s flight from England; and he himself lived to see the opening of negotiations for Catholic Emancipation in this country. He was created Cardinal at the unusually early age of twentytwo, and fourteen years later he was appointed to the bishopric of Frascati. In addition to this, he held the office of Dean of the Sacred College for the last four years of his life. Throughout this long and distinguished career he may be said to have had two interests, and two only, at heart: the service of his family and the service of his Church.Of his devotion to the Stuart cause much has already been written. He has been alternately maligned by Hanoverian historians and white-washed by the assiduous supporters of the White Rose League. The former have pointed with contempt rather than with pity to the spectacle of this last of the Royal Stuarts begging George the Third for a further subsidy to support him in his old age : while the latter have either blamed him for becoming a Cardinal or else reminded the world of his untiring attempts to secure Papal recognition for his brother as Charles the Third, and later of his own constant, if tactful, assertion of his rights to the English throne. But these desultory tracts of historical controversy are profitless for any save the most dauntless student of lost causes; and neither an emphatic condemnation of Henry Stuart’s conduct nor his political rehabilitation would be likely to have any effect on modern life or thought.
Spring in the Air
Authors: Hallack Cecily 
Published: July 2007

The April to which I look forward is a thing of more marvels than the April the colts snuff up on the March winds, with such promises of life ahead that in sheer joy they suddenly send the mud splashing behind them in the paddock, rearing and chasing in the ecstasy of that beckoning festival.The Easter to which I, as a Christian, look forward, comes after long Lent of February and March with their penance of pruning knife and scourging rain and skies grey-white as wood-ash in that long fast of bare black trees and beaten turf. But all through the forty days, Easter has been in the air; sometimes we have received the promise afar off, even before the immaculate conception of the first snowdrop in its humility. Certainly in March, when the sun is so veiled and weak that only the larks find it, when only jessamine and winter wallflowers give alms of gold, you may know the stir of sap under the dead bracken as you go to early Mass. England begins her preparations in good time, because she has always kept Easter with great liturgical splendour in her orchards and gardens, in field and farmhouse. She brings out the trinity cups of woodspurge and crocuses like gold, frankincense and myrrh, and St. Joseph’s violets, one by one. Then her gold and silver willow, white violets and wild daffodils, anemones under the old pear-tree, bracken fronds like a bishop’s pastoral staff, her yellow chickens and ducklings. In rain or sun, we hear the numes of bird-song, unconsciously obedient to the Motu proprio.
Theophile
Authors: Clegg Aileen Mary 
Published: July 2007

When we first went to the Pyrenees we lived in a tiny village at the foot of the Pic de Ger, about half-an-hour’s walk from Lourdes.Our village was a charming place. It was made up entirely of farmhouses, little and big, all of them colour-washed, most of them end-on to the road with their cobbled yards beside them, and all of them enclosed behind great gates as if they expected to be put into a state of siege at any minute. Even Monsieur le Cure’s house had originally been a two-roomed farmhouse. So, too, had ours till it had been converted to a villa by an enterprising son of the village. He had knocked away the lofts and the pent roofs with their little dormer windows, and the house now boasted two stories, with the traditional galérie and a series of attics.All the floors had been renewed. From that fact hangs my tale.
Two Books on Art
Authors: O’Connor John 
Published: July 2007

The Catholic Church and Art. By Ralph Adams Cram. (Calvert Series; Burns, Oates & Washbourne; 1929; 4/-).Art Nonsense. By Eric Gill. (Cassell & Co. and Francis Walterson; 21/- net).The first-named work deals with all that manifestation of the aesthetic instinct which flowered within the influence or the territory of Christendom whilst Christendom was at variance on things mainly human and material; and with its curious deviations and altered canalisations ensuing from Iconoclasm, as well as with the blight which came to it from Manicheeism and the sour-faced offspring Puritanism, that palmer-worm which devoured the leavings of the locust. It is truly a great little book, a masterly synthesis of all the movements which moved anything in the category of things that may be made. It is not only scholarly but abounding in observations which bespeak a right intuition upon a realm much enhavocked by people who are sure of what is not so. But can Bach be called a Catholic musician? He wrote a Mass in B minor which is one of the world’s chief treasures, but of no use to the Catholic Liturgy even were nothing enacted Motu Proprio. A greater than Bach is here, William Byrd, but though he is a very Catholic, even Papist, musician, I do not remember that he is mentioned. He labours under the disadvantage of being English. He also conducted Anglican chapels-royal for Elizabeth in her spacious time. But there is documentary evidence that both he and his organist, John Bull, kept their places at court on purpose to be able to hear Mass and get others to Mass, with impunity.
St. Mark's and St. Luke's Omission of St. Matthew XVI, 17—19
Authors: McNabb Vincent 
Published: July 2007

17. And Jesus answered and said unto him : Blessed art thou, Simon Bar Jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven.18. And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peetr and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.19. I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven.* * * * *The omission of this passage from the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke is of such significance that it has already occasioned a bulky literature. Those of us who are privileged to experience the peace of being in the Church of the Rock are intellectually unprejudiced towards the discussion, because whatever way the discussion turns, it always turns into a confirmation of the Petrine position. If on the one hand it be argued that Mark and Luke did not know of this text but that it found its way almost at once into the text of the first gospel, we are faced with the fact of such a widespread acceptance of St. Peter’s supremacy that a spurious text could be given citizenship in the gospel written, not by a mere disciple like Mark or Luke, but by an apostle, Matthew.If, on the contrary, the text was known, as indeed the present writer thinks it was known, though omitted, by Mark and Luke, inclusion in the gospel of one who was an apostle and an eye-witness of the incident is first-hand authority which no later omissions can destroy.
The Vatican Council
Authors: Pope Hugh 
Published: July 2007

Once more Abbot Butler has put us in his debt. It was not to be wondered at that the work involved in compiling his fascinating Life of Archbishop Ullathorne should have focussed his attention on the story of the unfinished Council in which Archbishop Ullathorne took so real a part though hardly one of the great protagonists in those immortal scenes.Though the Council is famous for its definition of Papal Infallibility, curiously enough this was not one of the subjects marked for discussion, even though everybody knew long beforehand that it was to prove the great feature of the meetings. Quite rightly then does Abbot Butler present us with a history of the Council in which the Dogma of Infallibility is the key to all the discussions, even to those which preceded the gathering of the bishops. That the doctrine should ultimately be defined was not only a logical necessity but an historical one, for it is enshrined in the doctrine of the Primacy already defined at Florence. Moreover, as it were unconsciously, the Christian ‘sense’ of the truth of this doctrine lay at the back of all the disputes between the Papacy and the Christian kings which are so marked a feature of European history. Hence in his opening pages the Abbot gives us a really masterly survey of such thorny questions as that of the deposing power claimed by the Popes, and of the effort—begun at Constance and perpetuated in Gallicanism—to make the Pope in some way or other subordinate to an Oecumenical Council.
Fredric Mistral
Authors: L'Estrange. J. K. 
Published: July 2007

Whilst Italy celebrates the bi-millenary of the birth of Virgil, Provence keeps this year the centenary of her own Virgil, Frédéric Mistral, born at Maillane, near Arles, on the 8th September, 1830. His memory is still fresh amongst his people, for he died only as recently as 1914, and we may confidently expect a flood of personal reminiscences from many who were privileged to know him intimately, but to the average Englishman, Mistral can be spoken of only as one who has already passed into literary history, and the justification of these lines must be the comparative unfamiliarity of their subject matter to most English readers.That Mistral is so little known here is perhaps to be ascribed to the fact that his writings are to us, in a sense, doubly foreign. His most important work, Mirèio (Mireille), may be known, as to its theme, through the medium of Gounod’s opera, but, of the latter, two versions exist, one of which falsifies the action of the poem for the sake of a ‘prettier’ curtain. The poem itself has been translated into English, but such is the irony of things, that the more readable a translation, the less it savours of the original, and in the case of poetry one feels dissatisfied with anything but a strictly literal version intended to enable the reader to follow the original, line by line. Mistral is doubly foreign to us, in the sense that even Paris is able to read him only with a French translation en regard.
Financial Control and Birth Control
Authors: Ginns Reginald 
Published: July 2007

De nominibus non est curandum is one of those trite sayings of St. Thomas which, outside its context, could easily be gravely misunderstood. He is blaming those who concern themselves more with words than with the realities which words are meant to represent. Words are only signs, and the sign without the reality loses its reason of being. It is a sign-post which points to a place that does not exist.There is abundant reason for thinking that the implicit criticism contained in these words of St. Thomas is especially applicable to modern times when men seem so strongly attached to words and symbols, and delude themselves into thinking that they possess the realities because they have the words. Democracy, efficiency and rationalisation are words to juggle with, though the realities they stand for seem to be very conspicuous by their absence. Indeed, you can never take for granted what the users of these words mean by them. A request for definitions is always worth while.
M. Chevalier's ‘Pascal’
Authors: Cary-Elwes Columba 
Published: July 2007

The fortunes of Blaise Pascal, that brilliant genius and highly-gifted soul, would now seem to be in the ascendant. Ever since his death he has suffered at the hands of editors and critics, beginning with the Pensées of Port Royal, going on to the calumnies of Voltaire, ending with his adoption by the nineteenth century sceptics. It is only in recent years that Pascal has received his due, and M. Chevalier’s book is the final stage in this rehabilitation. Nor is it merely that the charges against him have been proved to be false, for there is a positive growth in his fame; he is coming to be recognised as a Christian apologist of an original and persuasive quality. It is to France that we naturally look for an interpretation of this great Frenchman, and much has been written there about him in recent years; but there is no book, we believe, which is equal to M. Chevalier’s in its masterly account of Pascal’s life and in its just and sympathetic exposition of his religious philosophy.For a long time, unquestionably, Pascal’s reputation has suffered among Catholics from his association with Jansenism and from his unfortunate quarrel with the Society of Jesus. In the partisan dust raised by those controversies his chief work and true significance were almost completely obscured. We shall say very little about them, except this that in the matter of the Provinciates M. Chevalier seems to us rather lenient to Pascal.
Romance in Religion
Authors: Quidam Frater 
Published: July 2007

Not many of us are favoured with visions, usually through our own fault: for the best of all visions is the right appreciation of the inner significance of all these everyday things we have looked at for so long with unseeing eyes. That, we are sure, is the real character of the visions of the mystics. And these are visions which do not come suddenly and as suddenly fade away, leaving nothing but a memory behind them; they remain for ever.It was a vision of this kind that came to a certain brother as he stood one night chanting matins in the choir along with the others. Humanly speaking, he did not deserve to have a vision, for he was not in the dispositions which are piously supposed to lead to such favours. His lips were mumbling the psalms, but his mind was far away, and he looked to be bored. To speak the truth, he was tired, and longed for nothing so much as the end, so that he might go to bed. And if you could have seen into his mind and heart, you would have found that the attitude of his soul was no better than that of his body. He was in a mood of dejection and disappointment, for he was young in religious life, and religious life had not come up to his expectations. All his young life he had been a romantic dreamer, for ever lending himself to an imaginative exaltation of the past.