In view of the approaching General Election the J. Archbishops and Bishops of England and Wales deem it well to remind all Catholic voters of the following principles which underlie the Catholic attitude on Education, so that in giving their votes such electors may act in conformity with Catholic teaching and tradition in this matter of vital importance.

• (1) It is no part of the normal function of the State to teach.

• (2) The State is entitled to see that citizens receive due education sufficient to enable them to discharge the duties of citizenship in its various degrees.

• (3) The State ought, therefore, to encourage every form of sound educational endeavour, and may take means to safeguard the efficiency of education.

• (4) To parents whose economic means are insufficient to pay for the education of their children, it is the duty of the State to furnish the necessary means, providing them from the common funds arising out of the taxation of the whole community. But in so doing the State must not interfere with parental responsibility, nor hamper the reasonable liberty of parents in their choice of a school for their children. Above all, where the people are not all of one creed, there must be no differentiation on the ground of religion.

• (5) Where there is need of greater school accommodation the State may, in default of other agencies, intervene to supply it; but it may do so only “in default of, and in substitution for, and to the extent of, the responsibility of the parents” of the children who need this accommodation.

• (6) The teacher is always acting in loco parentis, never in loco civitalis, though the State to safeguard its citizenship may take reasonable care to see that teachers are efficient.

• (7) Thus a teacher never is and never can be a civil servant, and should never regard himself or allow himself to be so regarded. Whatever authority he may possess to teach and control children, and to claim their respect and obedience, comes to him from God, through the parents, and not through the State, except in so far as the State is acting on behalf of the parents.

When it was known that His Honour Judge Parry had written a new volume on The Bloody Assize, it seemed that at long last we should have a really judicial and temperate record of events that until now had been presented from no satisfactory point of view. Writers hitherto have generally been biassed by party feeling or swayed by modern prejudice; they have regarded the seventeenth century through the eyes—and the conventions—of the nineteenth, and they have been content (worst sin of all in a historical writer) to reproduce earlier statements without any honest endeavour to authenticate them or trace their origin. That they were clever men only made matters worse; who of us has not been swayed by Macaulay or Campbell, till we began to examine their ‘facts’ and enquire into their authorities? We find in them—and still more in lesser writers copying them—the same old suggestions, the same old stories, the same old accusations repeated time and again; often without acknowledgement, generally without question, and almost always without any judicial balance. But now that not only a lawyer but a judge, a man of our own days of cooler tolerance and understanding, was to tell the story once again it seemed that we might hope for a very different treatment. Unfortunately, in the book that lies before me now, we do not get it.

It is a pleasantly-written volume, light enough to interest the casual reader, serious enough to deserve attention. It is intended to appeal to a wide public, and is, therefore, the more dangerous. Frankly, it contains no new matter, and does not, I think, fairly or judicially present the old; once again we are given what we know already—and once again we are given it all on one side.

Man, paddocked in a narrow garth Of earth,

Hath only towards the sky Infinity.

(Vincent McNabb, O.P.

Kienthal? Kiénthal? Does the name recall anything to mind or have we already forgotten that Bolshevism was hatched in that nest?

I spent last year at Kiénthal, merely as a tourist, however, for I had entirely forgotten that it has an historical interest attached to it. This fact was brought to my remembrance through a long paradoxical discussion with my travelling companion on the question as to whether or not we have a right to put an end to life. We all know the problem by which medical men are sometimes faced, that is—is it permissible for a doctor, whose patient is suffering from an incurable disease and whose end is inevitable, to spare him further atrocious sufferings by hastening that end? But is it necessary to encourage doctors in such a dangerous practice, do they not, of course without evil intent, kill off enough people as it is? Or would it be a duty to hold out a saving hand to a dangerous bandit who, when climbing the mountains, lost his footing on the edge of a chasm? Would it not be easy to turn aside and become absorbed in the scenery, very beautiful by the way, and well worth looking at? A little incident told us casually by our guide—not that we needed a guide to cross so easy a pass, but we wanted our bags carried—just missed setting the discussion ablaze.

I went to this valley, one of the most peaceful and least known in Switzerland, in search of rest. Starting from the Lake of Spiez you quit the line of Loetchberg at Reichenbach and follow the length of a torrent by a winding way impracticable for cars.

Pierre Francois Le Courager, Augustinian Canon and Librarian of Ste. Genevieve, was the forerunner of many Frenchmen of distinction who have shown a kindly interest in the Anglican position and who have regarded ‘reunion’ as a not impossible dream. The Père Le Courager was a product of the Gallicanism of his day, the result of the long and uncertain contest between the Holy Father and the Kings of France, in which success seemed to incline first to one side and then to the other; but the odd trick, as Maitland would have said, fell to the Most Christian King. Louis XIV at his death left the crown virtually supreme in the Church and State. Apart from his Gallicanism, it is improbable that the Canon would ever have manifested much interest in the Anglican body.

Le Courager reproduced all the arguments of the Caroline Divines in favour of validity and of himself he added nothing fresh to the dispute. In fact, like all Frenchmen who have taken up ‘reunion,’ he knew little or nothing of England and her peculiarities. When he came here to reside and was given the Oxford D.D., a most unprecedented step, and one which aroused the wrath of at least one good Protestant, he no doubt learned more, but he was never really familiar with the psychology of the English.

The ‘Validité des Ordinations des Anglois,’ published at Brussels but purporting to emanate from Paris, soon caused a mild excitement similar to that with which we at intervals are familiar.

I have in my hands the letters and intimate notes of Mother Thérèse and the testimonies of the nuns who knew her most intimately, and it seems to me that it will be useful to give in a sort of précis the spiritual teachings of the venerable Mother. It will be easy to correlate them if one bears in mind that her entire life was orientated towards the mystery of the Cenacle.

It was on the Day of Pentecost itself that Marie Victoire Couderc made her First Communion at the age of ten years. From that time began to be verified in her regard the Divine Promise: ‘If you love me, keep my Commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you forever. The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, nor knoweth him; but you shall know Him; because He shall abide with you, and shall be in you’ (St. John xiv, 15, 16, 17).

Her whole life, like that of her Institute, will be to reproduce the role of Mary in the Cenacle. Now the Blessed Virgin in the Cenacle gives herself up (se livre) entirely to God, lives with God without ever losing consciousness of His Presence, and enjoys that permanent habitation of the Three Adorable Persons within her which is a foretaste of Eternity. But the contemplation of the Divinity does not make her lose the remembrance of the mysteries of the life and passion of her Son, and the Mother who was martyr with Jesus upon Calvary longs to fill up in her own person that which is wanting to the passion of the Redeemer.