Slum clearance. Catholics stress the importance of the home, and therefore, considering the great displacement of population and improvement of conditions involved, will require little persuasion as to the need of busying themselves with the workings of the recent Housing Act. This may take the form of concerted action to promote Catholic Housing Associations, through groups specially formed for the purpose or through already existing societies. To an outsider, the capacity and resources of the Knights of St. Columba seem to fit them admirably for such a work. Mr. Thomas Foster, in last month’s Blackfriars, outlined the necessity and practicability of such schemes. But there is a place for individual Catholic action as well, and in this connection we print the following letter to the Editor.

Immediate action. The state of affairs twenty years hence is difficult to conjecture. Those who foresee the break-up of Industrialism are preparing quite logically to go back to the land. Under the circumstances it is beside the point to criticise the smallness of their beginnings or to ask how townsmen can possibly be turned into successful farmers. But a general crash is far from being the only possibility. The centre of gravity is shifting from the congested industrial town, but whether it will move into the country or stop in the outer suburb is another matter. After all, there are various schemes which claim to be able to save our present system of production, although they would completely overhaul the financial system. For this reason, Mr. Foster’s suggestion in the present number of Blackfriars for Catholic housing associations deserves the most serious consideration.

An economic staff. The Army has specialist officers whose function is to adjust fighting power to the economic situation. The Church, too, has its specialists; but, very naturally, they are mostly concerned with principles and diagnosis of conditions. There is room for a more immediate and utilitarian effort. Local government affects our lives more than Parliament does, and although priests are often closely in touch with local developments, there seems to be a place for a council which would inform and advise diocesan authorities on such things as future town planning, the movement of industry, the possibility of a Catholic housing scheme at some strategic point. This is work for laymen, a form of Catholic action which did things, instead of debating social theory. For the times are too urgent to wait for many theoretical conclusions; the centre of Catholic life is a church, and what is a church unless the Catholics are grouped around it?

Is any religion better than none? The Church of England has evidently come to this conclusion, for it is hard to believe that any other alternative would have led the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London to give a personal ‘commission’ at Lambeth and St. Paul’s to an American Lutheran minister and a mixed crowd of five hundred amateur evangelists of every religious denomination for the purpose of converting London. I think it is true to say that fifteen years ago this could not have happened, and it is little less than a confession of spiritual penury that it can happen now. That the Bishop of Calcutta is sponsoring the Group Movement ‘Campaign’ has, perhaps, something to do with this official patronage, but nevertheless there is little that accords with the traditions and beliefs of the best type of Anglicanism in this strange mingle-mangle of Lutheran pietism, psycho-analytic methods and modern publicity propaganda.

Catholic Action is in fashion at last. For many years a small band of writers and lecturers have been urging their fellow-Catholics to get ready to take their places in the world-movements all around and to help in all spheres of life: political, social and economic, as well as religious. Furthermore, their emphasis has been that Catholics should take part in these activities not just as individual human beings, but specifically as Catholics, with the force and prestige of the Faith behind their endeavours. Many years have elapsed since this suggestion was first put forward by the Holy Father, but it is only of recent times that much attention has been paid to it by the Catholic community in general. Indeed, it has taken several years of hard times to demonstrate to Catholics at large that there is a specifically Catholic attitude to social ills and remedies for them which the Church alone possesses.

Yet this is almost as far as things have gone. There is much talk about Catholic Action—and there, far too often, the matter ends. When pressed for some practical confimation of our brave speaking, we can only point to one movement—the Catholic Land Associations—and even this is in its infancy. Already, indeed, we have done far too much pointing in this direction. One swallow does not make a summer, and while the Catholic land movement is a welcome development (welcome even if we disagree with it, because it is something practical at last) it can only be regarded as the beginning of Catholic social action. Far more is needed before the Catholic solution to our social problem is appreciated as it deserves by the nation as a whole.

The notice of German Catholic Reviews in the last number of Blackfriars gave a clear survey of the problems which confront German Catholicism as a result of the Revolution and the establishment of the new National-Socialist State. It would, indeed, be quite wrong to suppose that the attitude of German Catholics to this new order was chiefly one of irritation at the Gleichschaltung of the Catholic Centre Party, or any such secondary outcome of the Revolution. The Catholic’s outlook obliges him to view things in their essentials and to confront them from the standpoint of what is fundamental in his religion. And it is a striking testimony to the true greatness of our religion that it should, by its emphasis on objective truth, awake in co-religionists in other countries such understanding and regard for the present situation.

It cannot be truly said that my case has been what people call a flash in the pan. No boyish enthusiasm was it that carried me away, no feeling that I should hardly scruple to qualify as ‘sentimental.’ It was something absolutely serious, an absorbing interest. I wanted to ease my mind, I wanted to know where He was going. For His part, when He called me, I am fairly compelled to suppose that He distinctly knew what He was about. To follow Him without hesitation, I sacrificed my family, my friends, my fortune, my position. There has always been in me a kind of scientific or psychological curiosity, call it what you will, at the same time with a relish for adventure and speculation. All those stories of the pearl of price, of mysterious estates no one knows where, yielding fruit an hundred fold, I must confess them all calculated to fire a young man’s heart with the noblest ambitions. I swallowed the hook. Besides, I was not the only one to get caught. There were all those worthy fish-scrapers. But on the other hand, I saw well-to-do and well-thought-of persons like Lazarus, women of the world, masters in Israel like Joseph and Nico-demus, falling at His feet. You never know. After all, since the Romans came, a man may say he has seen all sorts. I wanted to know just all there was to know, and follow the thing from start to finish.