“Hence the particular problem now before us, which can be formulated as follows: should a new Christendom, in the conditions of the historical age on which we are entering, while incarnating the same (analogical) principles, be conceived as belonging to an essentially (specifically) distinct type from that of the mediaeval world? “

The question is posed on page 133 of the recently published English edition of Maritain's Humanisme intégrale. In its context the “now before us” refers only to one stage— albeit a crucial stage—in the argument of that great book. But I would suggest that it has a far wider significance. For I think that this is the vital question which now confronts Christian social thought and action, a question which calls imperiously for a clear answer. For so long as we fail to answer it, or so long as we answer it contradictorily, our social efforts must lack unity of aim and direction. So long shall we be disastrously divided into muckers-in and muckers-out and muckers-along. So long will there be hostile and irreconcilable “schools of integration” and “schools of separation.” So long will the latter charge the former with compromise with the world and the flesh and with ignoring the devil, and the former regard the latter as escapist saboteurs. So long will there be “Right” Catholics who quite honestly doubt the sincerity of the Catholicity of their brethren on the “Left,” and so long will there be “Left” Catholics who only with difficulty can regard their brethren on the “Right” as deserving the name of Christian.

The physical needs of man are few—food and fuel, clothes and dwelling place. His wants are as many as his desires.

The weakness of capitalism is that it neglects the needs and continually ministers to the wants; seeking to gratify every whim, wholesome or unwholesome, that the natural man confesses. Why this is so can be seen without difficulty.

The aim of the capitalist—and by the capitalist we mean the managing director of companies and amalgamation of companies—is to secure profits for the payment of interest to the people who have lent him money; that is to the shareholders. Our captains of industry do not ask, “Is this needful?” but “Will it pay?” when some fresh venture is proposed. Nor do our captains of industry, our ennobled and knightly masters of big business, consider whether the toil of tending, year in, year out, machines for the production of trivial luxuries is employment worthy of a Christian man. It is compulsory labour; the machine-minder is free to starve if he declines the job. (Indeed thousands are thankful for this employment, so thankful that positive gratitude is expressed, for permission to endure the monotony of the factory, sure of a regular wage. No wonder, too, when they are married, with wife and children and some measure of domestic happiness dependent on the weekly wage, that thankfulness is expressed.)

The fundamental moral principle governing the relations between men as producers and consumers, employers and employees, is admittedly that of social justice. The purpose of this article is to show, in a brief synthesis of papal teaching, that this principle implies the social theory of Christian corporativism, and to study the application of both in the leading articles of the Portuguese Statute of National Labour.

The Statute of National Labour was published on the 23rd September, 1933, six months after the plebiscite on the part of the Portuguese nation of the new Constitution establishing a “unitary and corporative Republic.” It is not itself technically a law, it is rather a preamble to all future social and economic legislation, in which has been elaborated the norms of the new social and economic order which in accepting the Constitution the nation had solemnly pledged itself to bring about. (Constitution: Part I, chapters IV and VIII.) Now that the constitution of the late Austrian Federal Republic is a dead letter, it stands unique among political documents for its fidelity to Christian social and economic principles and for the care with which it applies the precepts of papal teaching in the construction of a professional and economic code specially adapted to the needs of a particular nation.

The nature of social justice is clearly expressed by Pius XI in Divini Redemptoris: “it is impossible to care for the social organism and the good of society as a whole unless each single part and each individual member—that is to say, each individual man in the dignity of his human personality—is supplied with all that is necessary for the exercise of his social functions.”

The part played by the Dominican Order in the General Councils of the Church would make a very interesting study in Ecclesiastical history. The idea of the Order came to fruition in the mind of Saint Dominic when he was attending the Fourth General Council of the Lateran as companion and vicar-general to the bishop of Toulouse. It was then that he opened his mind to the great pontiff Innocent III who eagerly seized on a plan so comformable to the one he himself had already advocated, namely, the creation of groups of preachers to help the bishops in their task of preaching. In the first General Council of Lyons held by Innocent IV in 1245, a leading figure was the renowned theologian and scripture scholar, Hugh of St. Cher, the Order's first cardinal. In the second of Lyons held in 1274 the greatest figure was the venerable ex-Bishop of Ratisbon, Saint Albert the Great. Other prominent Dominicans were Peter of Tarentaise, dean of the sacred college and soon to become the Order's first pope as Blessed Innocent V; Robert Kilwardby, Archbishop of Canterbury and England's foremost scholar; and William of Moerbecke, Archbishop of Corinth, the translator of Aristotle, whose knowledge of Greek was so useful in arranging the re-union with the West and Eastern Churches. It is well known that Saint Thomas Aquinas died on his way to this same Council to which he had been summoned by Pope Gregory X. In the next General Council, that of Vienne in 1311, although no lists are extant of the prelates who attended, we are told by choniclers that the great number of Dominican bishops present caused some embarrassment and no little jealousy.

Teaching and worship have always been on friendly terms, arm in arm and in step with each other. Lex orandi, lex credendi, it is said. But it is not always easy to decide which takes the lead, since their action is reciprocal, teaching reacting upon worship and vice-versa. In general most will agree with the Abbé Vacandard, “that in Christianity the feast has always preceded the definition of the doctrine at the same time as the theological discussions contribute to precision in the meaning of the liturgical solemnity.” Yet in particular instances consistent teaching must have influenced devotion and directed it into new channels; though only after it has received practical expression in the liturgical worship of the Church is it crowned with precise definition.

The interplay of doctrine and devotion is of special importance in the honour paid to our Lady and the teaching concerning her, for in theology she is distinguished from all other saints by a liturgical distinction. The pre-eminence of our Lady is established by the type of cultus to be offered her, technically called “hyperdulia.” Doctrine and cultus are united here where she is distinguished from all other creatures by the type of homage which she should receive. But at the present time there are also many ideas concerning the blessed Virgin which are not so evidently connected with worship. By these she is given a very central position in the scheme of salvation as the “Mediatrix of all graces,” as “Co-redemptrix” or the “Mother of the Mystical Body” so that she is distinguished not only by the honour shown her but also by her unique type of co-operation in the redemption of mankind.

“Personality” is one of the most rampant of the little devils responsible for the poorly state of modem literary criticism. He is the devil behind the heresy of looking not so much at the work as at the writer, and of expecting to find the person of the writer in the work. Than this heresy there are few things harder to scotch; you think you’ve stamped it out in some little corner; but wait a minute and it will perk up its head again like bindweed or the Shepherd’s Purse.

It is certainly a very old heresy, but it can hardly ever have been so common as it is nowadays. For it is apparently related to having to write for a very large public, and there can hardly ever have been so many people reading as now. Most of us are far more interested in persons than in ideas and things. In this we are surely entirely right, and in reading books, so long as they were good books, our attention would naturally be caught and held by the author's characters. Left to ourselves there would naturally be little danger of our being too interested in the author, for the author, especially if he be a good author, is generally a very vague and shadowy person compared with the persons he has created. To the reader of David, Copperfield, David, Agnes and Dora, rather than Dickens, are the interesting persons; and even if the author does figure as a character in his own novel or play, the ordinary reader cannot know it.