The Catholic is aware of his solidarity with all men, aware too that in the sacrifice of Christ the whole of human history presses upon our present immolation and oblation for the achievement of Christ’s kingdom. It is certain that in being dead to ourselves we may become channels of the Church's redemptive action upon the body of mankind. We know first of all that what God now demands of us is not that which we possess but that for which Christ died. Nothing can be restored to Christ that does not belong to Him already. Our vision of the boundaries of the Church’s redemptive action has extended beyond the saving of our isolated souls to include all existence. And the boundaries of our own action are also extended. We do not have to prove before God the precise relation of our action to its effects, but our action, however partial and limited, is a participation and formulation of mankind’s supplication to the mercy and the victory of Christ.

If we are that grain of wheat which, falling to the ground, has not flinched to die, our fruit is com where men are hungriest and where the poor and the stranger come to glean. To bring the simile into terms of living, this losing of our life that we may gain it is a twofold supplication and identification. Firstly it is that death to self which through the agony and crucifixion is the identification of ourselves in Christ, and the supplication of God for a no less universal intention than that for which Christ died. So much is true of ourselves in so far as there is supernatural life in us.

By his study of the contemporary relations between Church and State on the continent of Europe Dr. Adolf Keller has deserved well not only of his co-religionists but of all those who are vitally interested in the present phase of the perennial struggle between Christianity and the powers of this world. Naturally, his view of the solution of these problems does not coincide with the Catholic view, but it certainly shows a realization of the need for greater unity, on which Catholics insist, and his analysis of the actual situation and presentation of the facts are of the greatest value to those of our Faith who are endeavouring to understand the situation and contribute towards its improvement. It is therefore the object of the present article to make a rapid survey of the problem in the light mainly of Dr. Keller’s evidence and to give some indication of the probable outcome of contemporary events in this sphere.

The constitution of the Church is divine and remains fixed and permanent, that of the State is human and based on contingent needs which vary from age to age. It follows that the relation between Church and State will not change through any development of the former but only through the different attitude which the State takes up with regard to the Church’s claims. In the light of her long experience and aided by the guidance of the Holy Ghost, the Church will adopt different methods according to the changing needs of time and place in order to fulfil her age-old task of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth and to bring supernatural life to the members of States which fail to recognize a law higher than the natural and often even offend against the latter.

After Golden Head in 1889, The Town in 1890 written in France, and a second version written in China 1897. The Golden Head is the drama of a man alone with his own nothingness; The Town is that of the Commonwealth of Men. Not the entire population is brought on to the stage as a really sophisticated modem would attempt or would pretend, but four men and one woman come forward, and behind them is the murmur of the masses.

Lambert de Besme is a political Boss. To him you turn when things come to a head, for he knows the magic formulae which quieten the crowd, and can give pleasant names to the behaviour of the herd. Yet he is not happy: after wasting his life in futile fuss he feels his soul awaking: stricken in years, he has not known the love of woman; this way, his world will fall to dust, he will seek shelter with the dead, will hug the dust before he is one with it; nay, the champion of the settled order will voice the vengeance of the oppressed.

In the course of a long and interesting correspondence between William James and Shadworth H. Hodgson on the subject of free-will, the latter writes as follows: “Let us, as you say, have no more ‘gnashing of the teeth over the freewill business’; let us agree to differ. The best of it is that we both believe in the reality of free-will, only that I think it can be reconciled with determinism, while you think indeterminism is required to make it conceivable.”

Although some fifty years have passed since these words were written discussion concerning the freedom of the will and determinism continues varied only in its mode of presentation. The same difficulties which confronted the writers just mentioned confront the psychologist of to-day. These difficulties arise in fact from differences of opinion concerning the meaning of free-will on the one hand and determinism on the other. At bottom the problems involved are speculative rather than empiric, and the controversy to which we have alluded was conducted rather on the former than on the latter plane.

In these “talks” we have been trying to meet the difficulties of those thousands of people who say they have no use for creeds and dogmas. We have tried to show them that dogmas —doctrinal statements—are necessary because knowledge of God is necessary, and that such knowledge can be conveyed to us only by words. And not only so, but we hold it to be a matter of plain historic fact that it was by words that God has conveyed the knowledge of Himself, of His love and His salvation, to us. We have described, too, the response which that historic Self-Revelation demands of us: the response of Faith.

But a difficulty remains. Granting all that has been said: granted that the truth of God is available to us; granted that we can learn about God through nature, and still more through His Self-Revelation in Jesus Christ—a difficulty still remains. For what, it has been asked, has all this to do with the vast and complex dogmatic system of the Catholic Church of to-day as we find it in her dogmatic formularies and catechisms? What have they to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ? What is it that we claim for these dogmas and formulas? We know that many of them have been drawn up only in comparatively recent times; every one of them subsequently to the time when Our Lord was on earth. What authority do we claim for them? Do we pretend that they were all expressly taught by Him during his earthly sojourn? Or do we claim that God makes new revelations to Popes and Councils and compilers of catechisms, in such wise that they can add to the content of the Catholic Faith which that Revelation demands?

The first reactions of a convert are either to shout (forgetting the time it took to unstop his own ears) or to hide in a remote spot (unmindful of the fact that very few people will be aware of his transfiguration). The tone of the Catholic Press and our more prominent Societies suggest that the shouters are in the majority. As one who was vociferous, anxious to proclaim the new experience, may I at once express penitence? I am now silent. Every outward sign of the faith is abolished in places where my non-Catholic friends and acquaintances are likely to penetrate. If they find me in Church or between the honourable covers of this magazine that is another matter, such places are proper to the faith. The dentist's waiting-room, the grocery store, the lawyer's office are not proper to the faith but to their functions; it is in such place that an aspidistra is preferred before a crucifix!

The absence of Catholic tokens does not mean that the Catholic dentist, grocer or lawyer is ashamed of his faith and lukewarm as to its propaganda. It means that his time is so fully occupied in being a Catholic privately and attending to his business publicly that he refrains from advertizing a fact which he might easily fail adequately to prove or practically to achieve.

In this country the Catholic is allowed out on sufferance, our churches are not stoned and our priests are tolerated only because the general public thinks them harmless. The Holy Father appears in the news as a distinguished foreigner with a sufficient number of friends in this country to justify half a column in the Press.

“Nec enim arbitror levioris esse operae Morum effingere quam Alexandrum magnum aut Achillem, nec illi quam hie noster immortalitate digniores erant.”

“For I do not think it a lighter task to paint More’s likeness than those of Alexander the Great or Achilles, nor were they more worthy of immortality than this man of ours.”

These words of Erasmus reveal the opinion that the greatest of his contemporaries had of Thomas More. On the friendship of More and Erasmus much history has turned and much history is beginning to turn even in our time. It is of surpassing interest to observe that Erasmus, the friend of More, was also friend of Franciscus de Vittoria, and that in his recent volume on The Spanish Origin of International Law Professor James Brown Scott introduces the work of Vittoria by reference to the Utopia of More and the Institutes of a Christian Prince of Erasmus.

One must be either a disciple or a critic. Or, at least, when interpreting the thought of a great man the criterion of interpretation should be indicated. The trouble with M. Nédoncelle’s book is that although it is not a simple exposition—it is in its way an apology—although his personal sympathies are evident enough, his general position is left vague. He writes neither as a theologian nor a philosopher; and no appreciation of von Hügel can help us very much unless it is undertaken from both these points of view. As is stated in the Foreword, certain minor changes have been introduced in this English edition. That they were necessary is evident from the fact that in the French edition (p. 114) M. Nédoncelle stated that von Hügel’s ideas on the limitation of Christ's knowledge were not contrary to the Faith.

In England it is especially necessary to be accurate about von Hügel. His influence has been considerable in religious bodies external to the Church. In some ways this has been good; the massive fact of a transcendent religion has been brought home to them. But since the Baron, although achieving an ever fuller orthodoxy, never eliminated certain heterodox elements in his statement of religion, his life seems to offer an example of what a “liberal” Catholic of the future might be; that future when Rome shall be more “enlightened.” This attitude towards him appears to be common among the Anglican body, now so unhappily in the throes of modernism. It is an attitude which the Baron would have intemperately resented! He was fiercely proud of being an ultramontane Roman Catholic. M. Nedoncefle notes that at the time of the modernist crisis “he did all he could to steady Tyrrell and to dissuade him from joining the Anglican Church.”

Mankind may be preparing its own destruction, but in the city where I live it all means more and more employment. On Sunday mornings at all the Masses in our little church you can see scores and scores of new faces—young men, whole families too, from South Wales, from Lancashire, from Glasgow way, from Tyneside, from Ireland—all crowding into our big city (which is so much too big already) and mostly finding jobs in the thousand-and-one preparations to be made before Britannia can put on her armour again.

Don’t think that I am condemning the Government for rearming. It is hard to see what else any Government could do, in face of all the maniacs armed to the teeth who are swaggering round Europe now looking for trouble. What the Government might have done is to carry out its pledge that profiteering would be prevented. That pledge has not been kept, and the speculators are enjoying themselves thoroughly. One company—formed to produce fighting-planes—began in July, 1935, with a capital of £2,000,000, doubled this in May, 1936, and issued a bonus to shareholders, and then in November declared a 30 per cent dividend and made a further bonus share issue of one new share for every ten. As the ordinary shares were issued at 15/- each and by November had risen to 45/-, this bonus issue was worth nearly £900,000, on top of the £300,000 distributed in dividends.