bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Transformation of Man
Authors: Holbrook David 
Published: July 2007

I find it very difficult to enter into an adequate debate with Mrs Haughton over the whole field of her argument. It is impertinent for me to do so, since I do not recognize the reality which to her is predominant. She says,All conversion involves repentance, a turning away from all that prevented the self-giving of love, a realization that, as preventing love, much in the past was incongruous and evil (p. 118).I could go so far with her, though I would need to argue about the exact meaning of ‘repentance’, ‘incongruous’ and ‘evil’. I would argue that the last word tells us more about those that use it than the quality or condition it is supposed to describe. But debate in this dimension would for me be valid. However, Mrs Haughton opens up a whole other dimension when she says. . . the prophetic calling involves repudiation of much more than unworthy and unloving behaviour. It sees that everything in the life of the flesh—the world as we know it—is futile and useless as a means of accomplishing the will of God. The truth of the world is so distant an approximation to the naked truth of the spirit, as perceived in the moment of revelation, that it can only be discarded (p. 118).Mrs Haughton is not, I think, characterizing this as a particular view of the prophet: she assumes it as a necessary attitude for her whole argument.
The Real Interests of the Peasant Boy: The Development of Education
Authors: Gaskell Austin 
Published: July 2007

(From the evidence of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Brougham and Vaux, before the Parliamentary Committee on the State of Education, 1834.)‘. . . Any universal compulsory system appears to us neither attainable nor desirable.’(Report of the Newcastle Commission, 1861.)‘. . . Even if it were possible, I doubt whether it would be desirable, with a view to the real interests of the peasant boy, to keep him at school till he was 14 or 15 years of age. But it is not possible. We must make up our minds to see the last of him, as far as the day school is concerned, at 10 or 11. We must frame our system of education upon this hypothesis; and I venture to maintain that it is quite possible to teach a child soundly and thoroughly, in a way that he shall not forget it, all that is necessary for him to possess in the shape of intellectual attainment, by the time he is 10 years old. . . .’(Evidence of the Rev. James Fraser, later Bishop of Manchester, quoted with approval by the Newcastle Commission, 1861.)
David Jones
Authors: Raine Kathleen 
Published: July 2007

The process by which the enduring reputation of one writer emerges among many of (at the time) apparently equal merit is mysterious. We do not so much change our minds as discover them; no dramatic reversal is involved but a gradual enlightenment makes it clear that (as in the present case) David Jones is such a figure. The supreme quality of his art (using the word in its inclusive sense, for it would be impossible, so closely related is the technique of his drawing to that of his use of words, to say that David Jones is an artist who also writes, or the reverse) has long been apparent to an inner circle of his friends, which included T. S. Eliot; but he has never at any time been a widely read, still less a fashionable writer, nor is he ever likely to become so, for his work is too fine and subtle and learned for popular taste. To ‘discover’ David Jones is to enter an elite.It was for a time possible for my generation to persuade ourselves that ‘the late Yeats’ was a different and incomparably better poet than ‘the early Yeats’ in order to justify what was really a change in ourselves and not in the poet. In the case of David Jones nothing of the kind would be possible. In the current number of Agenda there are several pieces of recent writing (or recently completed, for David Jones has a habit of laying aside pieces of work for years and then getting them out and working over them) but these are not technically different from, or necessarily better or worse than, In Parenthesis, his poetic novel, or epic poem, of the first World War.
What Will Happen Here?
Authors: Dummett Ann 
Published: July 2007

Scientists have been the poets of modern society. The myths of our age have been the creation, through popular repetition, of the genuine oracles of scientific discoverers, misunderstood, misinterpreted and misapplied by lesser men. The facts behind Darwin’s theory have been of less importance than the altered view of humanity they came to imply, the higher beast rather than the lesser angel. The clinical work of Freud is a small affair beside the wholesale change in sex-conventions that he fathered. Einstein’s few pages on Relativity revolutionized not only Physics but the concept of Truth itself in other disciplines and in popular understanding.Not least important of the myths we have grown up with has been the notion of Race. Already in the nineteenth century, some evolutionists applied the idea of competing and differing species to the apparently different groups of mankind, defined by general differences of physical appearance. The survival of the fittest came to be seen, in terms of Race, as the story of Nordic man’s superiority. The science of anthropology dealt in terms of ‘backward’ and ‘advanced’ peoples, with the assumption of European man’s advancement implicit. Now, modern biology and anthropology no longer deal in these terms. Race, as the term is popularly used, is not a biologically valid or respectable concept. The anthropologist has discovered and learnt to respect the sophisticated culture and technology of the rest of the world’s history. But the myth of Race remains solidly embedded in the intellectual apparatus of all educated people in Europe and North America.
Papalism Ancient and Modern (I)
Authors: John Eric 
Published: July 2007

It must be obvious that no theme of traditional theology requires a new airing in the atmosphere of aggiornamento more than that of the papacy and its place in the Church. Ultimately this is a task for the professional theologian but one who could, in Karl Barth’s words ‘… take history seriously as a force outside himself and which spoke to him with authority’. For this to be so, the historian, through whom history speaks if it speaks at all, must do some spade work. It is natural for theologians to suppose that since the data of their study are eternal verities or eternal falsehoods, then the theses they present are absolutely, once and for all, true or false. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that however absolute the central concerns of theologians are, there are very important areas of their study in which a radical relativism is called for.Let us take for example the theology of the eucharist. In an important sense, it is the study of the relationship between bread and wine, disposed within a certain ritual, and the flesh and blood of Christ. What could be more direct and simple, more suitable for questions answerable with a flat yes or no than this study? But these questions must be asked in terms of human language, that is they must be made intelligible in a human activity peculiarly prone to changes of meaning and peculiarly liable to quite remarkable expansion. For centuries it seemed that questions about the eucharist could only be asked in the language of Aristotle’s metaphysics.
Homeless Plus: A Study in Social Integration
Authors: Pearce Richard 
Published: July 2007

It is no exaggeration to say that there is a revolution afoot in the field of social welfare. In recent decades there has been much radical re-thinking; principles which previously had been tacitly accepted, in some cases for a century or more, have become the subject of an increasingly severe and telling criticism. Experimental ventures are breaking new ground almost daily, and, though at present few have been running for a length of time or on a scale sufficient to yield more than marginal results, they are nonetheless proving that an urgent need exists for still further research and new endeavours.Among the few which can claim a significant and definitive breakthrough, both in terms of success and in relation to other existing techniques and structures, is the Ladyeholme Association. This has been working in London for the past seventeen years and has achieved a 75 per cent success rate in re-integrating with society families and the remants of families which, for one reason or another, have dropped out of general society and into a twilight region of (semi-) destitution; for example, the unmarried mother and her children, the ex-prisoner and his family, the mentally ‘recovered’ in search of a home, the prostitute escaping the trade but needing shelter and moral support, the socially unstable of almost every sort. It is a mistake to believe, as so many of us do, that existing social services are doing enough in this deceptively simple field; for the most part, the problem has either been ignored or aggravated by inadequate ‘answers’.
Original Sin (I)
Authors: McDermott Timothy 
Published: July 2007

The story of original sin is a story told us by God through Christian tradition. As in all stories which make a point, some elements in this story are absolutely essential to its point, others belong rather to the particular style in which the story is told (and possibly another style might be equally effective), while other elements again are essential neither to point nor to style but included simply because that was the way an incident happened. But how do we decide which elements are which?In this article I shall suggest that the essential elements in the doctrine of original sin make a point about Calvary; that the references to Adam and the origins of mankind are part only of the style in which this point about Calvary is communicated; and that it is the gospels rather than Genesis which describe the way original sin actually happened. But how does one test such suggestions?By examining the only vehicle of the doctrine that we have: namely, the traditional interpretation; and trying to discover within that interpretation the story-teller’s point, the structure of his story and the importance of its various elements. So in what follows I shall first consider what the Council of Trent and Thomas Aquinas have to say about original sin, without questioning their presuppositions, in the hope that the purpose, structure and relative importance of the various elements of this interpretation will emerge. Only then will I try to explore the possibility of re-telling the story in a different form.
The New Dutch Catechism
Authors: Hastings Peter , Ernst Cornelius 
Published: July 2007

When theologians grumble and growl and commissions sit, a mere schoolmaster might have the sense to leave a book like this alone. It is true that the same theologians who bare their teeth at the little eccentricities of the Dutch Catechism have not, through the long years of damage, waved our own aloft shrieking for the faggot, an omission which anyone really interested in education must find it hard to forgive. Even without such unchristian, carping thoughts, an educator not hooked on the ancient catalogues of angelic powers might well go in to bat for the Dutch simply on the grounds that they have produced the right educational approach.It is not only its approach that I welcome, the content is often of immediate interest and importance to the schoolmaster, e.g. the section on ‘The faith to which one is bred’ in which are discussed the problems of child education and eventual personal acceptance and conversion that are built in to the practice of infant baptism. The views expressed endear the authors to me, but more yet the manner in which the problem is discussed in the light of the experience of the reader and the attempt to initiate trains of thought—and so it is not the content so much as the catechism’s significance in education that I intend to discuss.Other catechisms in use have not shown much interest in thought, only in answers—sometimes accompanied by dogmatically phrased ‘reasons’ in lieu of thoughtful discussion, but, with some less convincing answers, the bald statement alone without discussion or context.
Papalism Ancient and Modern (II)
Authors: John Eric 
Published: July 2007

I should like now to turn to a particular example and a particular pontificate, that of Gregory VIII. Gregory is, of course, the triumphalist’s hero: what history text-book is there that hasn’t its section on the Gregorian reforms? It seems to be scarcely noticed that these ‘reforms’—the division of the Church into two castes, a clerical caste with a duty to rule the laity, whose function it was to fight in causes the clergy considered worthy—are very largely what has come under attack at Vatican II and since. Nothing is more striking, I think, than the present Pope’s repudiation of one of the more notorious of Gregory’s friends, Cardinal Humbert, and his Constantinople ex-communications in 1054. Now the fact that certain policies could be reforms in the late eleventh century, yet be abuses nine hundred years later, is not in itself surprising. But in the case of Gregory there are important lessons to be learnt and important questions to be asked.But there is the question of means too, and there is a limit to the degree to which valuable consequences can excuse bad thinking and evil actions. Gregory, it seems to me, was guilty of both. The sickening frequency with which in his correspondence the quotation ‘cursed be the hand that abstains from blood’ is found cannot be excused with a reference to troubled times. Plenty of men of goodwill were just as shocked at the time. Again Gregory’s attempts to make the Sardinians and Corsicans acknowledge that they belonged to the patrimony of Peter and must pay the pope a tax are not in themselves very important.
Renewal
Authors: George A. Raymond 
Published: July 2007

Three dissimilar books illustrate three aspects of that search for renewal which now characterizes so much of the life of the Church.The Church in Transition (Geoffrey Chapman, 16s.) by Desmond Fisher, a Roman Catholic journalist, is a popular account of that great upheaval which would probably have come in any case but which was largely set in motion by Pope John. There are in most churches good simple believers who ask not in any obstinate spirit of opposition to all change, but in all innocence, ‘Why can't we just go on as we are?’ There are many books which we might put into their hands, but this is one of the clearest and best. It describes in lucid terms the preparations for the second Vatican Council and the subsequent events. Mr Fisher recognizes the importance of the Council, but sees clearly that it is only a beginning. ‘Vatican II proved the truth of the old tag—Ecclesia semper reformanda.’ ‘The aggorniamento is for all time and it must go on.’ But this work will not go on unless not only ecclesiastics but lay people are involved in it, and its ideas penetrate the thinking of Roman Catholics everywhere.
Violence and Brotherhood: a case of ‘trahison des clercs’
Authors: Westow Theo 
Published: July 2007

If I understand the French expression of the title correctly, the word ‘clercs’ does not primarily refer to the clergy but to those that in olden days were the philosophers, the writers, the scribblers and the gabblers, and no doubt some clergy came under this heading. Now there are few problems so bluntly omnipresent and so impractically approached by the intellectuals as violence.I have three books in front of me, one dealing with brotherhood, one with peace, and a symposium on violence. All three are connected since peace can only come from brotherhood and will never come at all as long as our world is dominated by violence. We are all Brothers, by Fr Louis Evely (Burns & Oates, 1967, 15s.), puzzles me. Apparently his books sell on the continent by the 100,000 and are translated into ten languages. Yet, the treatment of the theme of brotherhood is wholly that of a talk given at a retreat in the old style of a nice, comforting, pleasant relationship between a somewhat domestic God and a simple-minded Christian leading himself up the garden path in the private garden of his private soul. One respects the intention but it is difficult to take such spiritual glibness seriously. The next book is Building Peace, by Fr Dominique Pire, O.P. (a Corgi Book, 6s.), which is somewhat clumsily put together by Dr Dricot, but it is honest and faces some facts. I shall return to this later. The third book is called La Violence (Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1967, 12 Frs). It is a collection of papers read at the Semaine des Intellectuels Catholiques in February last year.
Original Sin (II)
Authors: McDermott Timothy 
Published: July 2007

In the traditional interpretation mankind is a unity because it is, so to speak, a genealogical tree of which each man’s personal life is a branch. I suggest rather that the unity of mankind must be thought of as a unity in history, a unity in a play with one plot in which each man has a rôle. Just as Aquinas conceived of a biological intention of nature presupposed to all personal intentions, and of the propagation of mankind as presupposed to all personal lives (and therefore in a position to taint them); so we must conceive of an intention of history, which I call its plot, underlying every man’s personal life in so far as that life is a rôle in the total play. Just as a man, on Aquinas’ picture, is to some extent determined by an intention of nature even before he begins to take personal charge of his life, so too man’s life must receive sense from the part it plays in the whole play, even before one judges of the success or non-success of the way he personally played that part.I would suggest, indeed, that this notion of a plot in history more truly expresses the nature of man than any genealogical or biological concept. For if, in some unimaginable future, intelligent animals were discovered on some other planet who belonged to some quite different branch of the biological tree, nevertheless, because they were intelligent animals, it would in principle be possible for us to communicate with them, for us to affect each other’s culture, and for us to grow into having one history with them.
Prophets and Parishes
Authors: Drinkwater F. H. 
Published: July 2007

Here is another of those radical-theology desacralizing books from the continent, this time translated from the French (Structures of Christian Priesthood by Jean Paul-Audet, Sheed & Ward, London 1967, pp. 200, 14s.). The author is a French-Canadian Dominican, a distinguished biblical scholar still at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. The general theme is broadly similar to that of Fr Robert Adolfs’ The Grave of God, but less challengingly expressed: namely, that the pastoral ‘structures’ (blessed word!) of the Church unfortunately took a wrong turning in Constantine’s time or even earlier and now need de-institutionalizing back to something more like the apostolic age. Interwoven is an argument against obligatory celibacy for the priesthood, which it will be easier to leave to the end of this article for separate consideration.The first two-thirds of the book take the form of historical evidence about Christian ecclesial organization in the first century or so. The evidence is marshalled from the New Testament and the early Fathers. What it shows (according to the author) is that our Lord’s own ministry’ was that of a travelling prophet, heralding a message (a kerygma) to the general public and imparting instruction (a didache) to his close followers. The twelve apostles were chosen and trained to imitate this mobile ministry of the word. Thus was set the pattern for the early Church, which at first was quite flexible; small local communities of a few dozen people meeting in somebody’s private house. Thus the ‘base-community’ (local Christians) was identical with the ‘liturgical assembly,’ and our author reckons that there were no ‘sacral persons’, nothing like the Jewish priesthood, at first.
Insight into Lonergan
Authors: Lash Nicholas 
Published: July 2007

I have been invited not only to comment on the essays published in this collection, but also to try to ‘place’ Bernard Lonergan and his work. The first task is not easy, the second is virtually impossible. In saying this, I am not denying that it is reasonable to ask questions such as: cWhat is Lonergan up to?’, ‘Where does he stand in contemporary debates?’. The list of contents alone would invite such questions. What is the common factor, beyond the mere fact of common authorship, in sixteen essays, originally published between 1943 and 1965, on such disparate topics as: ‘Finality, Love, Marriage’, ‘A Note on Geometrical Possibility’, ‘The Assumption and Theology’, and ‘Cognitional Structure’? Another reason for wanting to have Lonergan ‘placed’ is that, while the sheer difficulty of most of his work renders him inaccessible to many people, he has profoundly influenced such very different spirits as David Burrell, Bishop Butler, Charles Davis, Sebastian Moore, John Courtney Murray and Michael Novak. Yet, while I believe that Lonergan is one of the most profoundly original and creative Catholic thinkers of our time, it is his very originality that makes it almost impossible to place him. It may seem paradoxical to describe as ‘original’ a man much of whose writing bears the terminological hallmark of neo-scholastic theology and metaphysics. But then, the originality of Beethoven did not consist in the notes of the scale which he employed, but in the conception and structure with which they were ordered.Frederick Crowe’s editorial introduction to the collection is an excellent biographical and interpretative summary of Lonergan’s work.
Galbraith on the New Capitalism
Authors: Bliss Christopher 
Published: July 2007

One of the fundamental problems that any critique of Capitalism must face is that such a critique should, if successful, isolate features of a capitalist society that are specifically ‘capitalist’ from, for example, general features of industrial societies. This problem is most acute in the case of the human implications of the system. After all, the quality of life of an industrial worker does not differ as greatly between the United States and the Soviet Union as ideology, official and unofficial, would have one imagine. Indeed an examination of numerous features of American and Soviet society reveals strong similarities in social organization, and the distribution of power and income. The existence of such similarities has sometimes led observers to conclude that a process of ‘convergence’ is taking place; that as the Soviet Union becomes increasingly industrialized and wealthy, and as technical change takes place in both countries, the systems continually produce similar solutions to similar problems.In an extreme form such a view can become a kind of technological determinism. The vast and complex technology of our time determines for us power and social relationships and there is little we can do to change them. In such an extreme form this is akin to a rather crude Marxism, but one that logically applies the idea that the social structure is largely determined by the structure of production even to societies in which, officially, the means of production are in the hands of the people. However, even if one admits a larger role than this for political and social choice, there are clearly bounds on the social reforms and reorganizations that would be consistent with the continued working of the industrial system.