It is very gratifying to me to have the opportunity to express the good things I think of Father Gerald Vann’s recent book, Morals Makyth Man. A work such as this delights the mind with a “rejoicing in the truth” which is indeed characteristically thomist: a joy in fresh Air and Light. In this book we find, combined with constant care for doctrinal accuracy and for fidelity to the established principles received from tradition, that reverence for experience and for the humble truths of ordinary human existence, that quality of compassionate concern for the needs and the sorrows of the time, which we recognise as part of the heritage of the great Dominicans of history. For it has been written that we “must redeem the time”; and if it be that the distinctive mission of St. Thomas and his disciples is the evangelisation of the intelligence, who would feel more acutely than they the pressing urgency of this work of redemption?

It is certain that such work cannot be achieved without toil and hardship. Not without sufferings and opposition was St. Thomas able to assimilate to Christian thought a pagan Aristotle who appeared suddenly in his time surrounded by a cortège of Moslems and Jews. Towards the end of his life he was called to maintain, against the Bishop of Paris and the great majority of contemporary divines, the doctrine of the oneness of the substantial form of the human being, that doctrine which after his death was to be censured by Etienne Tempier and the Doctors of Oxford, but which now has become classical and established.

The pertinent remarks of Penguin on “Modern Education” in the September number of Blackfriars invite the expression of the principles of perfect education set forth in the following pages.

There is a marked similarity between the ideal put by St. Angela Merici before her children in the sixteenth century and that set by St. Dominic before his, more than three centuries before. “Angela’s was a war for truth,” writes one of her most recent and authorised biographers. Truth was also the ruling principle, one might almost say passion, of St. Dominic. Both were no doubt inspired by their common father, St. Augustine, whose rule of life was chosen by them both. “What desire,” he asks, “is more deeply rooted in our soul than the desire for truth?” It was so deeply rooted in the soul of St. Angela that on her tomb in Brescia it is written that she was not only an Apostle in word, but a Martyr in desire. Her desire was to give her life, as Christ gave His, in testimony to Truth, in a spirit of self-sacrificing service of the Truth, under the patronage of St. Ursula and the great multitude of virgins with her who were themselves martyrs to the cause of Truth.

The Apostolate of Truth may be resumed, it would not be exaggerated to suggest, in the word “Education.” “Education,” as Newman puts it, “is a high word. It is the preparation for knowledge and it is the imparting of knowledge in proportion to that preparation.”

Language is an instrument designed for the clarification of thought, and not, as Socialists too often assume, as a substitute for thought. This is no new development, for the discussion groups of Mr. Victor Gollancz’s Left Book Club carry on the tradition of the revolutionary clubs in eighteenth century France.

’ ‘Dans la vie,” writes Pierre Gaxotte, “ce qui compte, ce sont les actes; ici, ce sont les paroles. Dans la vie, ce que l'on recherche, ce sont des résultants matériels, tangibles; ici, ce sont des votes. Dans la vie, gouverner, c’est lutter contre des choses, prévoir, préparer, organiser, agir; ici, le grand art consiste à composer l’ordre du jour et à faire la majorité. Dans la vie, une pensée se juge à l’experience, à l’èpreuve des faits. Ici, c’est l’opinion qui règne. Est réel, ce qui emporte l’assentiment des auditeurs; est vrai, ce qui entraine leur adhésion . . . Dans la société de pensée, l’initié fait table rase de tout ce qui n’est pas abstraction et raison raisonnante. Il retranche de lui-même tout ce qui lui est vraiment personnel; il se réduit à cette petite faculté déductive qui est la chose du monde la plus répandue.”

Word fetishism plays an important part in the propaganda of the Left. The Oxford Dictionary defines “fetish” as “an inanimate object worshipped by savages for its magical powers.” To the Socialists inanimate words seem invested with magical powers. “Democracy” is such a word. No genuine Socialist worships the fact of democracy, for the intellectual Socialist has a contempt for the people and is ambitious not to be governed by but to dictate to the demos.

There are few countries the world knows better than France; yet few countries are less understood. Nearly all the opinions which foreigners are accustomed to express about France appear, to the eyes of a Frenchman, to be tainted with error or, at very least, to be unfair generalisations.

Will this be thought a mere reaction of patriotic pride? A refusal to recognise ourselves in portraits which do not flatter us? Perhaps; but it is not only that. For a Frenchman will, as often as not, refuse to recognise himself in foreign portraits which flatter him as well as in some he finds less gratifying. Even before criticising what is said of him, he is suspicious, mistrustful.

For he is aware even though he be incapable of analysing it, of the immense complexity of France and things French. France is a nation with a long history, wherein a great variety of traditions intermix and intertwine. Her apparent cohesion, however striking it may seem to the foreign observer, covers an astonishing diversity of very variegated provincial families, and, in the phrase of Maurice Barrès, of “spiritual families.” Monsieur Durand and Monsieur Lévy may be as alike as twin brothers, but they are nevertheless profoundly different. And if Monsieur Durand is a native of Paris, and Monsieur Lévy saw the light at Mulhouse, the difference will be very great indeed. The swarmings of parliamentary parties and groups, the rise and fall of a bewildering variety of political formations and of literary cliques—with all of which the foreigner observer finds it very hard to keep peace—bear ceaseless and ever changing witness to the truth of this.

That European society is in a state of decline is generally accepted. That the Catholic influence on the institutions of that society has been seriously diminished if not altogether eliminated is deplored by those who appreciate the Church's civilising power. The latter naturally do everything possible to reassert the claims of the Church and serious men of all kinds endeavour according to their limited means to prevent the decline. It may however be more useful and it seems more in accordance with the facts to regard the new age as already begun and, if not completely to solve, at least to propose a number of questions about the newest tendencies.

The fundamental fact is that our civilisation is something utterly different from what is properly described as European civilisation. The latter was established through the contact of the Roman and Barbarian worlds under the guiding influence of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church fused them and gave to society its distinguishing mark.

It is not a question of whether there were more baptised or better Catholics in mediæval times than there are in our own day. It is rather that society was then Catholic in outlook, with religion influencing all aspects of private and public life, while to-day it can no longer be called even Christian.

The rulers of mediæval society, the Guelfs and the Ghibel lines, the Hohenstaufens and the Carolingians, Henry II and Philip the Fair, quarrelling with one another, disobedient to the head of Christendom, were all Catholics by Baptism and profession.

Catholics are often criticised, where social questions are concerned, of talking much and doing little. This is not the place to make public confession—usually unwarranted, almost always odious; and whether or not there is justification for this criticism is more a matter for private examination of conscience. The fact remains that a certain empty verbosity is a fault to which fallen human nature is only too prone, and it is some gain if we are alive to the possibility in us of that strain of Pharisaism, “for they say and do not.”

The Young Christian Workers’ Movement strives to counteract this tendency. Having before its eyes the words of Pope Pius XI that ‘‘the first apostles of the workers are the workers,” it aims at transforming the conditions in which the young workers live, not by force of arms, but by the love of Christ and of souls in Him. This means being intensely practical, getting down to brass tacks, to concrete cases. A realization of this has given birth, quite spontaneously, to a House of Hospitality in London, following the example of that in Wigan. The idea of wage-earners under present conditions extending hospitality on any considerable scale may seem fantastic, and the effort in London, from very small beginnings, has not been without difficulties and seeming failures; but the work goes on, and appears to be growing. After some three months of life, this new venture is able to give some account of itself. Naturally, the control and direction of the house cannot be in the hands of those who are themselves at work elsewhere all day, and there is now a resident voluntary staff, but the Young Christian Workers, after taking an active part in the starting of the house, assist whenever they can.

Accounts of the Young Christian Workers’ Second Annual Congress have appeared in the Catholic Weekly Press. But a general reflection on their position in this country and their prospects in it might yet be useful.

At the first Annual Congress, December 4th, 1937, at Wigan, six groups were represented, numbers in all about 100. At the 1938 Congress, September 4th, at St. Dominic’s, London, N.W.5, 11 groups were represented and numbers approximately 200. There were boys also from places which have not yet a group but are preparing to start. The number of Priests present at the meeting of Priests connected with the movement was also roughly double that of last year. And this year the Congress was honoured by the presence of the Cardinal.

As at the last Congress the impression given by the members was that of real confidence in the enormous work the movement undertakes: to make itself responsible for every interest, spiritual, moral, intellectual, social, of the Young Worker. Indeed the responsibility is the inspiration, a point of strategy in Catholic Action. The London boys, to begin with, made all arrangements for the Congress —for feeding, for meetings, for transport in London; meeting trains and seeing off at all hours of the night and day. The Societies’ magazine was brought out (again exclusively by the efforts of the 14-25 years-old members), with a printed cover for the occasion. At the Congress meeting local section leaders from the North and South stood up and spoke practically of the leakage, social problems of working youth in their districts, and remedies, which the inquiries of the leaders are discovering.