There are some books whose line of approach sets up a train of thought in the reader’s mind. Quite apart from their intrinsic value, their very existence calls attention to some great problem, and only the more urgently when the problem is as obvious and the method of approach as honest as the day. In I Took Off My Tie Mr. Massingham has written a book of singular integrity and clarity of purpose; a book which has some of the clumsiness arising from profound honesty. Few writers succeed in attaining to such perfect unselfconsciousness as this author. The subject described is the life of a group of tenants in two or three houses in a side street in the East End. The book, as was almost inevitable from its subject, has suffered extensively at the hands of reviewers and has received a good deal of rather treacly praise. By some papers it has been regarded as a document or a sign and as other tiresome things. Mr. Massingham’s treatment of his subject is non-sentimental rather than unsentimental, and a writer of less integrity would have suppressed the character of little Annie Morgan knowing how the childhood of the poor throws the British Public off its balance. I Took Off My Tie is a record of actual experience and the author shared, in so far as he was permitted, the lives of the people he describes.

Lord Davies, indomitable apostle of international order, turns the Abyssinian fiasco to good account to reinforce his familiar plea for the creation of a tribunal of equity and an international police force. The latter remedy, it is true, has lost some of its pristine simplicity. Instead of an international air force coming fully fledged to life, it is conceived as the end of a process, “the organization of sanctions culminating in the establishment of an I.P.F.” The writer’s main conception of what is required to maintain peace in the future can be judged from the moral which he draws from the failure of the League to mobilize effective sanctions against Italy. “In order to rally world public opinion in support of the maximum penalties provided for in Article 16, both the moral and the material factors should have been brought into play, the former represented by an impartial tribunal charged with the task of recommending an equitable settlement to the Assembly, the latter by a Standing Board of Commissioners entrusted with the duty of co-ordinating sanctions in order to exert the most effective pressure upon the aggressor. Both these institutions were indispensable if it was intended to assert the rule of law.” Lord Davies sees that such a system—a supranational tribunal judging ex aequo et bono supported by adequate force—is impossible in the present condition of the League of Nations, which is little more than an association of Sovereign States. He therefore concludes that “the problem of the League is the problem of federalism,” and he urges that the League, beginning with the Federation of Europe, should develop into a Confederation, similar to the United States of America, having a Supreme Court and an executive authority “entrusted with a superiority of centralized force.”

Hilaire Belloc defined the attitude of the Catholic apologete to his sources, when he wrote: “I say the Catholic ‘conscience’ of history—I say ‘conscience’—that is, an intimate knowledge through identity: the intuition of a thing which is one with the knower—I do not say ‘the Catholic Aspect of History.’ This talk of ‘aspects’ is modem and therefore part of a decline: it is false, and therefore ephemeral: I will not stoop to it.”

Tertullian, too, was a Catholic apologete in act, when he wrote, of the Church in the third century: ‘‘Is it likely that so many churches, and they so great, should have gone astray into one and the same faith? No casualty distributed among many men issues in one and the same result. Error of doctrine in the churches must necessarily have produced various issues. When, however, that which is deposited among many is found to be one and the same it is not the result of error, but of tradition.” As Thomists would express it, more exactly: for this agreement no cause is given except it be one alone, namely the identity of the primitive dogmatic and hierarchic seed set in the world by Christ. This is certain.

In view of the manifold interests of contemporary psychology and of the searching criticism in regard to the meaning and foundations of psychology to which we called attention in a previous contribution, the question of the possibility of a Catholic psychology arises with a certain amount of urgency.

The Catholic student, whether of psychology in general or other subjects in which psychology may enter, as well as the educated layman interested in such subjects, sometimes asks whether there is any Catholic book on Psychology to which he may turn for guidance. One has had to admit regretfully that, outside the manuals of philosophy written primarily for the use of ecclesiastical students, there do not appear to be any which quite meet the needs of the lay student. It is true that books dealing with various aspects of modern psychology have from time to time been written by Catholic professors of the science. We may mention, for instance, one by Prof. T. V. Moore, O.S.B., of the Catholic University of Washington, D.C., Dynamic Psychology, and another by Prof. John Lindworsky, S.J., of the University of Prague, Experimental Psychology. There are others by continental writers not translated into English, but all of these works deal with scientific psychology, and do not touch upon philosophical problems. When therefore we speak of Catholic psychology we have to ask in what sense the expression is to be understood, and what precisely is to be sought from a Catholic book on Psychology as distinct from any other.

The theory of contemplative prayer put forward in Abbot Chapman’s Letters was examined in the June, 1935, issue of Blackfriars, but since then certain passages in the letters themselves have been the subject of controversy. The question of the soundness of a widely read book of spiritual instruction is obviously an important one, and it merits some further consideration. One learned writer has recently suggested that, since we have nothing but incidental phrases by which to judge the Abbot's correctness in stating the problem of contemplation, it is unnecessary to assume that he intended to express general principles in the passages that have caused misgivings. This view does not accord with the fact that one of the published letters, dated as early as 6th April, 1913, explains fully the theory of mysticism which the Abbot had worked out for himself. The same theory appears in his article on Catholic Mysticism in the Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, published in 1917, and it is further elaborated and defended in the Downside Review article of 1928, which is reprinted as an appendix to the Letters. This theory, then, and its practical implications must claim attention.

The Church has had no occasion to make a solemn judgment on the nature of contemplative prayer, but two pronouncements of her ordinary magisterium require careful consideration by anyone who would study the subject. The first is the Encyclical Letter Divinum illud of Pope Leo XIII (9th May, 1897), a document that was clearly inspired by, and well sums up, St. Thomas’s general teaching on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, as indeed the teaching of St. Thomas sums up and explains the Catholic tradition, scriptural, patristic and liturgical.

When St. Thomas wrote his Summa to embrace the whole of theology, he did not think it necessary to divide his treatise in two independent parts, Dogma and Morals. The division, adopted many years later for pedagogical reasons, was not an improvement on St.Thomas’s method. To treat the truths of faith separately from the virtues and vices was an easier method of teaching the queen of the sciences, yet results have shown that the easy division has been allowed to develop into a fatal dichotomy. It is now generally considered, implicitly at least, that dogmas have little effect on everyday life and that for practical purposes the all-important subject is “Morals.” The sermon in nine cases out of ten is a moral exhortation, while the discussions of the “schoolmen” are considered as far removed from the realities of life.

Unfortunately the latter allegation cannot be wholly disproved. Whether we hold that the beginning of the world can be shown only by faith, or maintain its proof by natural reason to be possible, our lives remain unaffected by the discussion. On the other hand, the great dogmas contained in divine revelation concerning God, the Holy Trinity, Grace or the Incarnation should have an infinitely greater effect upon our behaviour than the clearest notions about contraception or the evils of capitalism. There are, moreover, many discussions in theology which possess the power of altering very profoundly one’s relations with God and one’s personal life in grace.

A very actual and important example, to which the above remarks are intended as a preface, is that of the nature of the Mass.

The Bishops of Belgium have recently made public the convocation of the Sixth Malines Congress. It will comprise three days of lectures and discussion, will be held in the archiepiscopal city, and will be brought to a close by a great demonstration in which tens of thousands of the faithful will participate; but, in view of the fact that Malines is not extensive enough to hold this concourse, the demonstration itself will take place in Brussels, upon the high plateau of Koekelberg which is dominated by the national Basilica of the Sacred Heart. As far as one can judge beforehand, this demonstration will surpass anything that has hitherto been seen even in Belgium, where the popular temperament loves to show itself in enormous public gatherings with processions, local choirs, and hundreds of banners.

It can be maintained without any exaggeration that the religious history of Belgium has been moulded by these Congresses of Malines, an account of which is given in an interesting book by Professor M. Defourny. In the Congresses of 1863, 1864 and 1867 the Catholics of Belgium assembled their forces together and laid the foundations of their corporate public action. It was about 1840 that the Liberal Party in Belgium began to evolve into an anticlerical party, and the Catholics saw themselves under the necessity of defending their rights in the political field and in public life. Thanks to M. Edouard Ducpétiaux, who was the moving spirit in these earlier Congresses and remains one of the greatest glories of Catholic social action and the courageous precursor of social reforms, these Congresses effected the concentration of the Catholic forces and inaugurated their fruitful operation in public life.

Academism in painting has been defined as a sort of formalism imposed on art by philosophers and men of letters through too exclusive an admiration for the works of Classical Antiquity. It might also be described as the expression of that which is officially sanctioned by a governing body of painter-professors, endeavouring to control and instruct public opinion and to regulate painting by a sort of schoolmastering system. The Renaissance gave birth to it, and the pedagogues and flatterers who have beset the person and fame of Raffaello Sanzio, living and dead, have fostered it. It grew up side by side with that dignification and ennoblement of painting that is so striking a feature of the sixteenth century, and to it is due the self-consciousness that has haunted the painter ever since. “To this enthronement of Raphael we owe many mediocre and even hateful works. To it we owe the taste for the simpering in religious art; the taste also for modelling that is at once photographic and blurred,

. . . the taste for lowered eyelids or for eyes raised piously to Heaven (expressions that the Saints in ecstasy never had), the taste for noble old men, theatrical philosophers, apostles in paper togas; and all this at the expense of truth which has since been found ignoble, of fine colour which has since been thought too material, and of genius which we have treated as madness.”

Although the spirit of Academism has persisted for four centuries, during which time it has served as a form of arbitrary criterion whereby the art of an individual or of an epoch may be judged by the layman, there have, nevertheless, always been artists of temperament and of fine sensibility who have ignored the precepts of the Academism of their epoch, and who have sought expression by methods that are less dictatorial and pedantic, and, in fact, more proper to art itself.

One of the proofs of the Divine origin of the Church is her adaptability to the needs of successive generations. The Faith once for all delivered to the Saints is always the same, and so also are the Counsels of Our Lord for a life of perfection. But as we have a Christ-given Authority living on earth, the application of these Divine Counsels to the needs of human life have had to be adjusted from time to time to meet the various requirements of a changing world.

The first Religious of the Christian Faith were hermits, who lived austere lives in the caves of the desert. Later these men gathered together in monasteries, where they earned their living by farming, and lived holy lives singing the praises of God. The ideal of these early monastic foundations was always separation from this wicked world, and the construction of a brotherhood according to Christ. But by degrees a far off cry reached the ears of these sequestered Christians, the cry of the pain of the world, the agony of Christian slaves, and a sense of pity and responsibility for suffering humanity crept into their hearts. So heroic men sacrificed the security of the cloister and banded themselves together into Orders for the ransoming of slaves. The next inroad on the peace of the cloistered monk came from the ignorance and the religious needs of the laity, for whom the secular clergy were insufficient.

To those who live abroad, the problem of the American Negro may seem vague and distant, for missionary fields in China and Japan are much better publicized than those in the Southern United States. But the soul of an American Negro is just as important as any other soul, and it is a certain fact that the elevation of an American Negro to the dignity of Sainthood would do much to further the cause of the Church among the coloured people of the world.

For this reason, the cause of Blessed Martin de Porres, the famous South American Negro, has become a favourite topic in the Catholic Press of the United States. The Dominican publication, The Torch, published in New York City, has recently inaugurated a movement known as the Blessed Martin Guild, which co-ordinates all efforts toward canonization made by Martin’s friends. In its work, the Guild is constantly actuated by the thought of the thirteen million American Negroes who have yet to receive the light of faith, and to whom a Saint of their own race would be an undoubted inspiration. It is with this same purpose, therefore, that the present article is submitted to the readers of Blackfriars—that they may realize to some extent the vast apostolate awaiting the humble Dominican laybrother.

The vitally important doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ has found a valuable exponent in Mgr. Fulton Sheen, in whose recent book is to be found a popular exposition of this hitherto somewhat neglected teaching of St. Paul and the Fathers. Unfortunately, however, there does not appear in it a clear notion of the union of the Mystical Body, without which the significance of the doctrine must inevitably escape the lay reader. In this book, as elsewhere, one finds a very useful distinction between an organization and an organism, which serves to set the Church apart from any other type of social unit. Yet many of the terms, such as “body,” “organism,” “life,” “cells,” commonly used in this context swing to and fro between mere metaphor and strict analogy, so that it is not always easy to pierce the cover of resemblance and lay hold of the reality beneath. Further, analogy is of the lower with the higher, and represents the attempt to arrive at a knowledge of the invisible by comparison with the visible and the material. Continual stress on material likeness is apt to shape the hidden truth according to the unreality of the looking-glass; so that when there does exist a notion which is immediately applicable to the truth itself, and which is commonly understood by the general reader, that notion should be used with insistence. We may gain a considerable knowledge of the nature of “art” by studying it in terms of lines and masses, but we can hardly obtain by these means a clear idea of the vital spirit which makes a work of “art” something beyond either line or mass.

The close of the Victorian age was marked by a deep and significant unrest amongst those painters and writers who, escaping from the prevailing smugness and weak hypocrisy of that time, had clung firmly to what they looked upon as the true and vital principles of their art. Heralded by the Pre-Raphaelites, and by Ruskin, a period of revolt was approaching which was to pass from one hideous negative extreme to another extreme, so assertive as to lose all semblance of order, that necessary attribute of beauty. To-day, this lack of restraint, this utter impatience of rules still finds ardent support amongst such poets as Stephen Spender and W. H. Auden. By taking the work of so entirely individualistic a poet as Gerard Manley Hopkins as their model, they are condemned at once, on their own showing. They are as rash as the painter who might seek to model himself upon Parmigiano or upon Blake. It is true that the value and deep intrinsic meaning of the work of the artist had been almost entirely discounted by the Victorians. Nowadays, it would be readily admitted by all that any true art is essentially the product of the life of its time, reflecting the thoughts and whole tendency of that particular age.

In Henri Ghéon’s Secret of the Curé d’Ars we read the following statement: “M. Vianney was terrified to learn that in the long roll of the ages not a single parish-priest had been raised to the Church's altars as a saint. Popes had been canonized, cardinals, bishops, religious and laymen; but of parish-priests not one; not the shadow of one. The melancholy inference was that there was no condition in the whole world in which sanctity was more difficult to attain.” (Translated and ed. Sheed & Ward, p. 123.)

This statement is not merely a depressing one, but, if true, a disturbing one to clergy and laity alike. As a matter of historical fact we hope to show that it is an extremely inaccurate one. Who makes the statement? Not Ghéon, he records it. Not the Curé, he learnt it; but whether orally or by reading we are not told.

In the first place, what exactly is meant by the office of parish-priest? Surely nothing else than the charge or, to use the canonical term, the cure of souls in a defined district. In this sense parish-priests have existed since the peace given to the Church by Constantine in the fourth century; possibly as early as the third century in the comparatively long gaps between the persecutions. What is meant by ‘‘being raised to the Church’s altars as a saint”? Does explicit or even tacit approval of a saint’s cult by the Holy See suffice?

After a preliminary period of confusion, it is now possible to gain a clearer view of the political scene in Spain. Two facts emerge: that the Catholic question was not the dominant issue and that it did not decisively swing votes either the one way or the other; that the Catholic deputies who lost their seats (Traditionalists, Alfonsists and others) did so not as a consequence of their Catholicism but because of specific political issues. Acción Popular, which we may legitimately describe as the Catholic party in Spain, actually increased its representation and is easily the largest party in the new Cortes. The Left gains have been made principally at the expense of the Centre Radicals, who staged a spectacular collapse, despite the promotion of a Centre ‘ ‘hold-the-ring’ ‘ party by President Alcalá Zamora and Premier Portela. Centre deputies who lost their seats paid the penalty of “betraying the Republic.” Don Alejandro Lerroux, one of the oldest Republican leaders, failed in two constituencies, and but a bare dozen of his followers have been returned. Señor Cambó, leader of the Catalan Lliga (Right) for many years, was also defeated.

Ever since its foundation the League has been suffering from the circumstances of its birth. It was the offspring of a union between a utopian ideal to establish world peace and a cynical determination to enforce a military victory. This two-sided ancestry, typified in the attitude of Wilson and Clemenceau, has shown itself throughout its history. At some periods it has appeared vainly idealistic, at others hopelessly time-serving. By some the League is considered too ambitious, by others not ambitious enough. Those who believe it to be the only possible means of avoiding a general world war have not always been its best friends, while those who have been more sceptical about its possibilities of preventing war have often been the servants of peace. The reason for this is that the former base their arguments upon the idea of the League as it was designed to be, while the latter interpret the League as it is. The former have nearly wrecked their instrument, by putting it to too great a test, while the latter must content themselves with an unsatisfactory “I told you so,” while the policies of the various nations seem to be leading more and more to an ultimate disaster, and the institution, designed to bring greater reason into international politics, stands helpless and discredited. What is the reason for this political impasse? Is there no way out? Perhaps a few reflections on its past history will be helpful in the formation of a new attitude towards the League—for a new attitude must be found.

The Montessori Method of Education may be said to be based on the twin principles of “Freedom” and “Prepared Environment.” This is an inadequate definition, but it will suffice for our present purpose.

It is now over twenty years since the first “Casa dei Bambini” was opened in Rome, and hundreds of visitors came from every quarter of the globe to observe the behaviour of those small slum children from the tenement houses. During this time the Method has spread to the most distant corners of the world—not only amongst Europeans, but also amongst Indians, Chinese, Africans, South Sea Islanders and many others. The results have been always the same, and can be summed up in a sentence. The Montessori Method has proved beyond a doubt that the child loves work.

“Protection of savings! ‘’ seems to be the guiding slogan of new financial regulations lately introduced in Belgium; according to the new C.S.G. Year-book. In the United States, also, the New Deal legislation in regard of banking and Stock Exchange professes to aim at “protecting the investor,” which sounds much the same thing. This is well enough as far as it goes, but a truly Catholic sociology must needs point out that there are other objectives, even more urgent, to which Governments should direct their monetary policy. If we need protection of savings, we also need protection from savings. It is right that people who save money should be protected from their own over-eager avarice and from the financial sharks who take advantage of it; and it is equally necessary that the community in general should be protected from accumulations of money, large or small, which are used in ways injurious to the common good.

Nineteenth century philosophy took for granted that thrift and saving was always a good and meritorious habit. Nowadays we are not so sure. We can see that this business of saving is at the bottom of the whole money muddle. If there had been no savings there would have been no banks to look after them, no lending of them at interest, no invention of credit-creation, no national debts. The old Christian and Catholic teaching, of course, condemned saving (in effect) as sinful. Everybody was supposed to give away his surplus income to those who hadn’t enough; money saved was money that ought to have been spent on the poor.

There is no more deceptive key to a country than its popular seaside resort. For the pursuit of pleasure is curiously the same, whether it be in Brighton or Boulogne. One has to penetrate beyond the promenades and smart hotels to reach the heart of a nation. Of no country is this so true as of Wales. The English visitor, spending his fortnight at Llandudno or Rhyl, is aware of little that distinguishes these places from their English counterparts. There are probably more chapels, the Sunday restrictions are more puzzling, odd snatches of a barbaric tongue may be heard on country ‘buses. And there are the inevitable comic postcards, depicting tourists battling with unpronounceable names. But these are the most incidental of features. The charabanc tour of the countryside, with its well-worn round of beauty spots, does little to impart the true spirit of the land. The country is but a convenient and picturesque hinterland to the seaside town.

To Catholics, recognition of the individual character of Wales is of special importance. Wales may, in the practice of government, seem little more than an extended England. But it is a fatal mistake to suppose that the accidents of history have wrought a complete and unquestioning submission. This is not to suggest that there is any want of loyalty among the Welsh. Political nationalism is never likely to be a major issue. But there is a loyalty—of culture and of language—that overrides the artificial bonds of a constitution. The survival of this intense regard for national expression is sufficient proof of how deep-rooted are the things of the spirit.

When Sir Arthur Eddington writes that “Religion first became possible for a reasonable scientific man about the year 1927” and when apologists expound their novel vindications of the classical cosmology in the light of quantum mechanics, it is clear to a metaphysician that both sides have missed the point. For the metaphysical approach to reality, with its immediate determinations in psychology and cosmology, either transcends the contingent data of individual research, or it does not exist. Yet apologists and even representative metaphysicians have not always appreciated this essential preliminary to philosophy and apologetics.

Hence it is all the more a remarkable fact when a non-Catholic writer appreciates it, independently, it would seem, of any manifest contact with a philosophical tradition. And in spite of the charges of buffoonery and leg-pulling sure to be brought against him from academic strongholds, the fact that he penetrates again and again to radical metaphysical realities, scattering pseudo-scientific question-begging postulates right and left in his convinced insistence, evidently commands our conscientious attention. We do not praise him precisely for his individual work, but rather because he is representative of an approach greatly, but often vainly, sought. The added fact that he is a professional mathematician, nurtured in the atmosphere of modern physics and thoroughly familiar with it, inevitably inclines many of us all the more to give him a hearing—not because he is a physicist, but because he is a physicist who has gate-crashed the conventional postulates of the physicist philosophers of the last three decades—intelligently, that is to say, and not by mere reaction.