Let me begin with an assumption. I assume that I am speaking to an audience, every member of which has much in common with me. Above all we have before us a common end. We have a common desire that all believers in Jesus Christ our Lord, the true Son of the true God, should be one, even as He and the Father are one. We have all an ambition, and it is more than a mere Utopian dream, to restore in Christendom what we recognise as having been severed, ‘the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. One body and one Spirit: as we are called in one hope of our calling.’

Nevertheless, before I begin to say anything positive at all, I am conscious that there is a fundamental difference of outlook between many who kindly listen to me here and my colleagues and myself. Though in words we may seem to reach the same goal, we start from different standpoints. It is a difference, not so much of theological definitions as of philosophical first principles. We may profess to believe the same truths, we may express them in the same terms, and even in the same actions, yet, because of the different foundations on which we build them, they have not for us the same substance, or value, or solidity. Many, whether consciously or not, will not easily accept the external evidences, the objective truths, which to us, as to all Catholics, appear conclusive and convincing. To them truth is more subjective, more a matter of personal judgment, and personal interpretation, than it is to us; to them it is something that comes rather from within a man himself than from without.

The election results of November 8th, 1932, in the United States should have been expected. For as long as the human race has had popular elections the voters have been in the habit of putting out of power those holding office in a time of economic depression, and giving the others a mandate to try their skill in the handling of the weighty problems of government. In the United States, for instance, the election of 1840 reversed that of 1836 through panic. The panic of 1857 affected the election of 1860, as did also that of 1873 affect the popular vote of 1876. In 1893 Cleveland had to meet the same situation. Taft in 1908 is the sole exception proving the rule, and that was because he was the candidate of the still popular ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt, and a discontented Democracy did not rally to Bryan. Now a tidal wave of votes sweeps Mr. Herbert Hoover and the Republicans out of Federal and State offices, and sweeps Mr. Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats into power. It is the first time since before the Civil War that the Democrats have been in the majority in the nation, Vermont being the only State under undisputed Republican sway. Thirty-eight out of forty-eight States have Democratic Governors, and the State legislatures will be predominantly Democratic. Three-quarters of the House of Representatives will be Democratic and in the Senate there will be a Democratic majority of twenty-two. Out of five hundred and thirty-one votes, the electoral college cast four hundred and seventy-two for Roosevelt, and the people a majority of between six and seven millions. The bare cupboard of depression has vitalized the Democratic Party.

The social conditions of our times which we have briefly examined in our previous article have seriously impaired the art or craft of motherhood. The principal reason for this has been economic insecurity together with the contributory causes already referred to, the ‘dissipation of life’ and the diminished population of the home.

The economic security of the home and the stability given by the indissoluble marriage bond are ordained to the end of parenthood and especially to that of motherhood, and any deterioration in these two conditions must inevitably tend to destroy the home as the medium of Christian education.

It is of supreme importance, therefore, if the art of motherhood is to be preserved, to safeguard the economic security of the home; and if the leakage from the Catholic Church in England is due in large measure to the failure of the home as a means of Christian education, then the first remedy for such leakage is economic.

A strange juxtaposition! Yet a perfectly warranted one.

On 25th March, 1829, Charles Lamb wrote to his friend, Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, telling him of some books he had purchased and then he went on to say :

Seven months afterwards—on the 26th of October—he hears of the illness of Coleridge and he seems to have thought that the reading of St. Thomas would do him good, for he wrote to Mr. Gilman on that day :

My immortal fellow guest once said that it was ‘funnier to have a nose than to have a Roman nose.’ There are many things like that. For example: it is funnier to be a Catholic than a Roman Catholic—that is to say it is funnier that a man should have any religion than that he should have the true one. Again it is much funnier to wear trousers than to wear Bond Street trousers, and when I sit eating my lunch in a Lyons teashop it becomes abundantly clear that it is much funnier to eat anything at all than it is to eat even the Lyons’ portion.

But, thinking of this meeting, perhaps the funniest thing of all funny things is the thing called art. It is funnier that there should be art than that there should be any particular kind of art, however fantastic.

And this is specially true in these days. The word Art of course means first of all simply skill—human skill. Thus we have the art of the dentist and that of the pickpocket and thus we have the word ‘artful,’ which is much the same as ‘crafty.’ But there is a special sense of the word art which we are concerned with here and in this sense art is not mere skill, though it involves skill (for nothing can be done or made without at least a little skill).

In 1886 the recognised leader of the Catholic laity in Italy, Giuseppe Toniolo, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Pisa, wrote as follows:

‘True civilisation, which should not be confused with mere material progress, flowed out of the wounded side of the dying Christ when he inaugurated on Mount Calvary a new era of self-denial and charity. Only an imperfect preparation for civilisation existed in the world before the Cross. Outside the shadow of the Cross can only be found either the complete negation, or the gradual decomposition of civilisation. In union with the Cross the history of the advance of civilisation is synonymous with that of the progress of Catholicity.’

Undue importance is perhaps given to the present antiCatholic campaign in Spain by those English Catholics who are ignorant of the nation’s history and unaware that the present measures are for the most part a repetition of the events of the last century. The problem tends to lose its alarming proportions and is narrowed down when seen in its true historical perspective. The problem, however, still remains, and in view of the present state of our world civilisation we may be justified in concluding that it has reached or will reach a decisive stage in Spain’s history. The problem of how such a Catholic nation could so unexpectedly become the home of persecution and hatred of religion is found to be deeper when it is realised that Mexico is also a Spanish country, and that anti-clericalism and violent opposition to the Church are rampant in all the Republics of Spanish America and have always formed an integral part of their stormy politics. We should also keep in mind the sufferings of the Church in Portugal and her daughter country, Brazil.

If (hypothesized Aristotle) if but the tool could do its own work, even as the automatons of Daedalus and the walking tripods of Hephaestus, then there would be no need of slaves and ‘prentices. And if (thought Antiparos of the water mill) we go on inventing things like this we shall certainly liberate our poor slaving women and return to the Golden Age. And Marx (who mistook the plutarchy born of the Reformation for Christianity) caustically observed that the ingenious Antiparos knew no political economy; and Aristotle not being a Christian could not conceive the intricacies of value-breeding process and other mysteries of industrial capitalism. Actually, the work of the machine, which according to Proudhon should be a protest of the ‘genius of industry against humiliating and murderous toil,’ is better described by the words which Ure applies to a modern factory, ‘A vast automaton composed of various mechanical and intellectual organs acting in uninterrupted concert for the production of a common object, all of them being subordinated to a self-regulated moving force.’ Ure’s ‘benignant power of steam’ (quoted sardonically by Kautsky) does not extend its benign influence beyond its true lord and master, the capitalist (whose beaming benevolence pervades the whole working world).