The Cambridge Summer School

Extract

From August 4th to August 9th, the annual meeting of the Summer School of Catholic Studies at Cambridge took place. Each year this Cambridge Summer School has devoted itself to a particular subject, which it has set itself to study and explain. Previously the Religion of the Scriptures, the Eucharist, the Papacy, had been so treated; this year, in accordance with the desires of the Pope, expressed in his encyclical Studiorum Ducem, the principle matter discussed was St. Thomas Aquinas, his Life, Times and Teaching.

The solemn opening of the School was made in the impressive Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs with a sermon by Father Martindale, S.J. In an interesting way Fr. Martindale examined the break-up of thought and life that had taken place since the sixteenth century, its dissociation of part with part, in matters intellectual and spiritual, in culture, and, especially, in the principles of action. Saved as Catholics were from spiritual and doctrinal separation, they yet remained caught in the cleavage of politics and culture, and severed therefore in large measure through Protestant and over-nationalised party narrowness from proper contact with each other. To bridge this gulf betwixt nations, sciences, and religious groups was the ideal and hope of many; but it could be effected only by a common possession of principles, and these in turn must depend upon a common philosophical basis and a common faith. Both philosophy and faith sprang from the teaching of Christ. The statement of this teaching by the Early Church Fathers held Christendom together for two hundred years, by St. Augustine for another eight hundred, by St. Thomas from the thirteenth century till the Reformation.