bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Christian Humanism
Authors: Deman Thomas 
Published: July 2007

Christianity has ever been faced with the challenge of that conception of life which we call humanism, originated and elaborated by the philosophy of the Greeks, It would be possible and interesting to trace the long history of the adventures of Christianity’s encounters with humanistic conceptions. It did not begin with the Renaissance, nor have the encounters been concerned solely with problems of aesthetic. Indeed, they call in question an attitude of life which concerns the very foundations of our intellectual life and our moral conduct.What is to be the distinctively Christian attitude to humanism? Is there a Christian humanism, and if so what principles must govern it? These are questions which the science of theology alone can decide with competence and finality. With its aid, we shall here set out some of the more important principles which must be taken into account in any definition of authentic Christian humanism.
Cinema in Society
Authors: Turnell Martin 
Published: July 2007

“May not Wisdom and the English people,” runs the closing sentence of Mr. Huntly Carter’s book, The New Spirit in the Cinema, “build a splendid Theatre-Cinema, temple to initiate all into a new philosophy and a new religion?”This sentence, which is curiously symptomatic of the age in which we live, provides a useful starting point for a discussion of the cinema. For the cinema must not be regarded as an isolated phenomenon. It must be seen against the social background of our time and as the latest phase in the development of modem art.There has been a pronounced tendency in recent critical theory to make art serve some purpose beyond itself, often to turn it into a substitute for religion. Instead of looking to religion to provide them with their philosophy, it is to art that educated people are more and more inclined to turn. It is poetry or the novel or, according to Mr. Carter, the cinema that will initiate us into that new philosophy and that new religion which remain significantly so vague and ill-defined.For the origins of this attitude we must go back to the upheavals of the sixteenth century which destroyed European unity and divided culture into a vast number of tiny independent cells—some religious, others not—each basing its life on a different and usually contradictory philosophy.
Can Any Good Come Out of Communism?
Authors: McNabb Vincent 
Published: July 2007

No one should attempt to read what I shall write unless they understand a principle which alone could justify what may seem like a justification of Communism. I think I first realised the principle when discussing Henry VIII with Protestants whom Froude’s glorification of Henry had infected. The Froude-infected mind proclaims the great good that came of Henry’s policy; as if the increased fertility of the infant burial place at Bethlehem justified Herod in slaughtering the Innocents. On hearing this mode of arguing I did not refuse to grant, for the sake of argument, that some or even that much good had come of Henry’s thefts and murders; but I refused to grant that Henry’s policy was a good policy because good came of it; or even that Henry was either a great or good man because great good had come of his way of acting.The abstract principle which Henry VIII’s legal thefts and murders made me see and accept was this: A man, a programme, a policy is not good merely because good comes of it; especially if the good that comes of it has come by the operation of a good-will. Just as there is nothing so good that a bad will cannot turn it to bad, so there is nothing so bad that a good will cannot turn to good.
Nazi Apologetics
Authors: Quinn Edward 
Published: July 2007

With the admirable intention of giving the English public reliable and authentic information about present-day Germany and in the hope of thereby promoting friendlier relations between the two countries twenty-one prominent Germans have collaborated to produce a book called Germany Speaks. In many respects the work is well done. It is an attractive-looking book, lengthy without being too discursive, and generous in the amount of information about many aspects of German life and policy. Unfortunately it fails to give anything like an adequate account precisely of those questions which have caused the average Englishman to take up an attitude which is at best distrustful, at worst positively hostile, towards Germany.The fundamental principles behind the Nazi system, labour, social and economic conditions and Germany's external relations are of interest chiefly to politicians and intellectuals and the average man is prepared to admit the truth and justice of much that appears under these headings. The problems which do need an explanation if the ordinary Englishman is to be won over to sympathetic understanding of Germany and which are omitted or scarcely touched on in this book may be reduced to four.
Endowment of Destitution
Authors: Clayton Joseph 
Published: July 2007

Relief of distress is one thing, endowment of destitution quite another. Naturally we give the cup of cold water—more probably of hot tea—to the vagrant men and women who ask for it at the door. Naturally the spare coat or shirt goes to the man in want of it. These benevolent acts we all perform, as we supply the match (always supposing we have one) to the casual smoker unprovided with the means of ignition. Which of us would berate the smoker for his carelessness, or require the filling up of a form to explain why he left his matches at home? The natural law enjoins relief of one’s neighbour.Endowment of honourable and voluntary poverty— dowries and other provision for the sons and daughters of our Lady Poverty vowed to religion—this has been the practice of mankind in many lands long before the coming of Christianity. Plainly it is a matter unrelated to the endowment of destitution.Nor again because we are bound to do our best for the poor who “are always with us,” the halt, lame and blind, the mentally and physically defective, the orphan, the aged and infirm, must we confound this entirely just and charitable provision with the endowment of persons unwillingly destitute and fully capable of earning their living.The acceptance of destitution as the inevitable lot of thousands, a merely regrettable feature in our otherwise admirable civilisation, is the shameful thing to-day. Destitution accepted and tolerated by our elected rulers from every political party; accepted and tolerated by our Catholic legislators in Lords and Commons as unprotestingly as by non-Catholic. Only the question of “how much” the destitute shall be given to save them from starvation is hotly debated.
The Primacy of Truth
Authors: Graham Aelred 
Published: July 2007

Now there remains goodness, beauty, truth, these three: but the greatest of these is truth . . .If the implied parallel between these three “transcendent- als” and St. Paul’s disposition of the theological virtues with charity at their heads be not an exact one, the right understanding of the place of truth in human life is nevertheless of no less moment than—is, indeed, an indispensable condition of—an enlightened appreciation of the claims of charity ; a fact which may perhaps go far to justify so seemingly bold an adaptation of the scriptural text.It would not be difficult to show that whatever is permanent in human activity is in some way an expression of man’s instinctive worship of “the good, the true, the beautiful.” The saints and moral reformers, the philosophers and savants, the artists and poets proclaim their homage by their respective functions; they walk within the sanctuary of this trinity and offer their praises as its chosen votaries. As surely, if less evidently, the more familiar ways of life, the commonplace actions of every day, bring their own witness. To read a newspaper is to admit a need for knowledge, which is another name for truth—however precarious may be this particular means of obtaining it; to smoke a cigarette is to satisfy a craving, assuage desire, that is, to acquire goodness within a limited sphere of reference; to gaze upon an object or to pause and listen for no other reason than that it is delightful is to pay tribute to beauty.
Men and Morals
Authors: Maritain Jacques 
Published: July 2007

It is very gratifying to me to have the opportunity to express the good things I think of Father Gerald Vann’s recent book, Morals Makyth Man. A work such as this delights the mind with a “rejoicing in the truth” which is indeed characteristically thomist: a joy in fresh Air and Light. In this book we find, combined with constant care for doctrinal accuracy and for fidelity to the established principles received from tradition, that reverence for experience and for the humble truths of ordinary human existence, that quality of compassionate concern for the needs and the sorrows of the time, which we recognise as part of the heritage of the great Dominicans of history. For it has been written that we “must redeem the time”; and if it be that the distinctive mission of St. Thomas and his disciples is the evangelisation of the intelligence, who would feel more acutely than they the pressing urgency of this work of redemption?It is certain that such work cannot be achieved without toil and hardship. Not without sufferings and opposition was St. Thomas able to assimilate to Christian thought a pagan Aristotle who appeared suddenly in his time surrounded by a cortège of Moslems and Jews. Towards the end of his life he was called to maintain, against the Bishop of Paris and the great majority of contemporary divines, the doctrine of the oneness of the substantial form of the human being, that doctrine which after his death was to be censured by Etienne Tempier and the Doctors of Oxford, but which now has become classical and established.
Towards Perfect Education
Authors: Doolan Ǽgidius 
Published: July 2007

The pertinent remarks of Penguin on “Modern Education” in the September number of Blackfriars invite the expression of the principles of perfect education set forth in the following pages.There is a marked similarity between the ideal put by St. Angela Merici before her children in the sixteenth century and that set by St. Dominic before his, more than three centuries before. “Angela’s was a war for truth,” writes one of her most recent and authorised biographers. Truth was also the ruling principle, one might almost say passion, of St. Dominic. Both were no doubt inspired by their common father, St. Augustine, whose rule of life was chosen by them both. “What desire,” he asks, “is more deeply rooted in our soul than the desire for truth?” It was so deeply rooted in the soul of St. Angela that on her tomb in Brescia it is written that she was not only an Apostle in word, but a Martyr in desire. Her desire was to give her life, as Christ gave His, in testimony to Truth, in a spirit of self-sacrificing service of the Truth, under the patronage of St. Ursula and the great multitude of virgins with her who were themselves martyrs to the cause of Truth.The Apostolate of Truth may be resumed, it would not be exaggerated to suggest, in the word “Education.” “Education,” as Newman puts it, “is a high word. It is the preparation for knowledge and it is the imparting of knowledge in proportion to that preparation.”
French Anti-Clericalism
Authors: Folliet Joseph 
Published: July 2007

There are few countries the world knows better than France; yet few countries are less understood. Nearly all the opinions which foreigners are accustomed to express about France appear, to the eyes of a Frenchman, to be tainted with error or, at very least, to be unfair generalisations.Will this be thought a mere reaction of patriotic pride? A refusal to recognise ourselves in portraits which do not flatter us? Perhaps; but it is not only that. For a Frenchman will, as often as not, refuse to recognise himself in foreign portraits which flatter him as well as in some he finds less gratifying. Even before criticising what is said of him, he is suspicious, mistrustful.For he is aware even though he be incapable of analysing it, of the immense complexity of France and things French. France is a nation with a long history, wherein a great variety of traditions intermix and intertwine. Her apparent cohesion, however striking it may seem to the foreign observer, covers an astonishing diversity of very variegated provincial families, and, in the phrase of Maurice Barrès, of “spiritual families.” Monsieur Durand and Monsieur Lévy may be as alike as twin brothers, but they are nevertheless profoundly different. And if Monsieur Durand is a native of Paris, and Monsieur Lévy saw the light at Mulhouse, the difference will be very great indeed. The swarmings of parliamentary parties and groups, the rise and fall of a bewildering variety of political formations and of literary cliques—with all of which the foreigner observer finds it very hard to keep peace—bear ceaseless and ever changing witness to the truth of this.
The New Age
Authors: Quinn Edward 
Published: July 2007

That European society is in a state of decline is generally accepted. That the Catholic influence on the institutions of that society has been seriously diminished if not altogether eliminated is deplored by those who appreciate the Church's civilising power. The latter naturally do everything possible to reassert the claims of the Church and serious men of all kinds endeavour according to their limited means to prevent the decline. It may however be more useful and it seems more in accordance with the facts to regard the new age as already begun and, if not completely to solve, at least to propose a number of questions about the newest tendencies.The fundamental fact is that our civilisation is something utterly different from what is properly described as European civilisation. The latter was established through the contact of the Roman and Barbarian worlds under the guiding influence of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church fused them and gave to society its distinguishing mark.It is not a question of whether there were more baptised or better Catholics in mediæval times than there are in our own day. It is rather that society was then Catholic in outlook, with religion influencing all aspects of private and public life, while to-day it can no longer be called even Christian.The rulers of mediæval society, the Guelfs and the Ghibel lines, the Hohenstaufens and the Carolingians, Henry II and Philip the Fair, quarrelling with one another, disobedient to the head of Christendom, were all Catholics by Baptism and profession.
Progress of the Y.C.W
Authors: Synnott Finbar 
Published: July 2007

Accounts of the Young Christian Workers’ Second Annual Congress have appeared in the Catholic Weekly Press. But a general reflection on their position in this country and their prospects in it might yet be useful.At the first Annual Congress, December 4th, 1937, at Wigan, six groups were represented, numbers in all about 100. At the 1938 Congress, September 4th, at St. Dominic’s, London, N.W.5, 11 groups were represented and numbers approximately 200. There were boys also from places which have not yet a group but are preparing to start. The number of Priests present at the meeting of Priests connected with the movement was also roughly double that of last year. And this year the Congress was honoured by the presence of the Cardinal.As at the last Congress the impression given by the members was that of real confidence in the enormous work the movement undertakes: to make itself responsible for every interest, spiritual, moral, intellectual, social, of the Young Worker. Indeed the responsibility is the inspiration, a point of strategy in Catholic Action. The London boys, to begin with, made all arrangements for the Congress —for feeding, for meetings, for transport in London; meeting trains and seeing off at all hours of the night and day. The Societies’ magazine was brought out (again exclusively by the efforts of the 14-25 years-old members), with a printed cover for the occasion. At the Congress meeting local section leaders from the North and South stood up and spoke practically of the leakage, social problems of working youth in their districts, and remedies, which the inquiries of the leaders are discovering.
Human Needs and Human Wants
Authors: Clayton Joseph 
Published: July 2007

The physical needs of man are few—food and fuel, clothes and dwelling place. His wants are as many as his desires.The weakness of capitalism is that it neglects the needs and continually ministers to the wants; seeking to gratify every whim, wholesome or unwholesome, that the natural man confesses. Why this is so can be seen without difficulty.The aim of the capitalist—and by the capitalist we mean the managing director of companies and amalgamation of companies—is to secure profits for the payment of interest to the people who have lent him money; that is to the shareholders. Our captains of industry do not ask, “Is this needful?” but “Will it pay?” when some fresh venture is proposed. Nor do our captains of industry, our ennobled and knightly masters of big business, consider whether the toil of tending, year in, year out, machines for the production of trivial luxuries is employment worthy of a Christian man. It is compulsory labour; the machine-minder is free to starve if he declines the job. (Indeed thousands are thankful for this employment, so thankful that positive gratitude is expressed, for permission to endure the monotony of the factory, sure of a regular wage. No wonder, too, when they are married, with wife and children and some measure of domestic happiness dependent on the weekly wage, that thankfulness is expressed.)
Catholic Social Doctrine in Portuguese Corporativism
Authors: Rainer A. A. C. 
Published: July 2007

The fundamental moral principle governing the relations between men as producers and consumers, employers and employees, is admittedly that of social justice. The purpose of this article is to show, in a brief synthesis of papal teaching, that this principle implies the social theory of Christian corporativism, and to study the application of both in the leading articles of the Portuguese Statute of National Labour.The Statute of National Labour was published on the 23rd September, 1933, six months after the plebiscite on the part of the Portuguese nation of the new Constitution establishing a “unitary and corporative Republic.” It is not itself technically a law, it is rather a preamble to all future social and economic legislation, in which has been elaborated the norms of the new social and economic order which in accepting the Constitution the nation had solemnly pledged itself to bring about. (Constitution: Part I, chapters IV and VIII.) Now that the constitution of the late Austrian Federal Republic is a dead letter, it stands unique among political documents for its fidelity to Christian social and economic principles and for the care with which it applies the precepts of papal teaching in the construction of a professional and economic code specially adapted to the needs of a particular nation.The nature of social justice is clearly expressed by Pius XI in Divini Redemptoris: “it is impossible to care for the social organism and the good of society as a whole unless each single part and each individual member—that is to say, each individual man in the dignity of his human personality—is supplied with all that is necessary for the exercise of his social functions.”
Our Lady's Place in Worship
Authors: Pepler Conrad 
Published: July 2007

Teaching and worship have always been on friendly terms, arm in arm and in step with each other. Lex orandi, lex credendi, it is said. But it is not always easy to decide which takes the lead, since their action is reciprocal, teaching reacting upon worship and vice-versa. In general most will agree with the Abbé Vacandard, “that in Christianity the feast has always preceded the definition of the doctrine at the same time as the theological discussions contribute to precision in the meaning of the liturgical solemnity.” Yet in particular instances consistent teaching must have influenced devotion and directed it into new channels; though only after it has received practical expression in the liturgical worship of the Church is it crowned with precise definition.The interplay of doctrine and devotion is of special importance in the honour paid to our Lady and the teaching concerning her, for in theology she is distinguished from all other saints by a liturgical distinction. The pre-eminence of our Lady is established by the type of cultus to be offered her, technically called “hyperdulia.” Doctrine and cultus are united here where she is distinguished from all other creatures by the type of homage which she should receive. But at the present time there are also many ideas concerning the blessed Virgin which are not so evidently connected with worship. By these she is given a very central position in the scheme of salvation as the “Mediatrix of all graces,” as “Co-redemptrix” or the “Mother of the Mystical Body” so that she is distinguished not only by the honour shown her but also by her unique type of co-operation in the redemption of mankind.
On “Gulliver's Travels”
Authors: Sayer George 
Published: July 2007

“Personality” is one of the most rampant of the little devils responsible for the poorly state of modem literary criticism. He is the devil behind the heresy of looking not so much at the work as at the writer, and of expecting to find the person of the writer in the work. Than this heresy there are few things harder to scotch; you think you’ve stamped it out in some little corner; but wait a minute and it will perk up its head again like bindweed or the Shepherd’s Purse.It is certainly a very old heresy, but it can hardly ever have been so common as it is nowadays. For it is apparently related to having to write for a very large public, and there can hardly ever have been so many people reading as now. Most of us are far more interested in persons than in ideas and things. In this we are surely entirely right, and in reading books, so long as they were good books, our attention would naturally be caught and held by the author's characters. Left to ourselves there would naturally be little danger of our being too interested in the author, for the author, especially if he be a good author, is generally a very vague and shadowy person compared with the persons he has created. To the reader of David, Copperfield, David, Agnes and Dora, rather than Dickens, are the interesting persons; and even if the author does figure as a character in his own novel or play, the ordinary reader cannot know it.
Contrition and Action
Authors: Vann Gerald 
Published: July 2007

“The preaching of the truth,” said the Pope last year to the French bishops, “the preaching of the truth did not bring many victories to Christ: it brought Him to the cross. It is by charity that He won souls and drew them to follow Him. That is the only way in which we shall win them.” The importance of the question of means cannot be overstressed. Over and over again, great enterprises, Christian enterprises, have been brought to nought because evil, unchristian means have been adopted to achieve them. What is the business of the Christian, as a Christian, in regard to the temporal order? It is to work for the building of the temporal City of God: the remedying of injustice and hatred, the establishment of justice and charity. Temporal and spiritual meet and fuse in the structure of society inasmuch as this or that social structure preserves or destroys the eternal values; so that when a social structure destructive of Christian values obtains, it is part of the duty of the Christian to work to change it. What kind of means is he to adopt?We shall certainly be misled if we allow ourselves to forget —as so often we do—that on the one hand catholic means universal; on the other, that to-day there is no existing Christian temporal order.We shall certainly be misled if we think of the work of the Christian in the world in terms of making the world safe for the (existing) Christians.