The perusal of a copy of The Christian Pacifist which seems to have something of a Christian inspiration suggests the question ‘Is there a Christian Pacifism? ‘The issue for May, 1944, written before the Second Front was an actuality, contained this passage: ‘Through the deafening noise and blinding smoke let us try to see what is happening. What really are these brave events? Homes stricken desolate by grief! Children for ever rendered fatherless with all the thwarting and distorting consequences in character! The most precious creations of affection and long care smashed clumsily to formless fragments ! God’s noblest works defaced and fouled! The very life-blood of the family of nations poured out in mad and irremediable havoc? And a great heap of bitter hatred and lust for vengeance towering still higher than the material ruins ! Here is fear exalted over faith; evil worshipped in the place of good.’

Though this apostrophe may have a tinge of that ‘sentimental pacifism ‘which Pope Pius XI. warned us must not be confused with the ‘Peace of Christ,’ yet it has also some resemblance to papal exhortations themselves, especially those of our Holy Father Pope Pius XII. during the war. It even contains in brief his reasons for appealing for peace. But like all arguments that are not quite in tune with sound philosophy, it begs the question, and that in its concluding sentence.

In a real sense the history of the Church is the history of its saints. For the Church is a living society, and its life is made most manifest through those of its members who are honoured for the integrity of their faith and the holiness of their lives—the saints. If, then, as Leo XIII. said in a famous utterance, the Church has nothing to fear from a truly objective investigation of its history, the lives of its saints can in no way be dimmed by a scientific study of their sources.

But there is a difference. Saints are persons, and persons are loved; round their memory there develops something deeper than documents. The acta of popes and councils are generally available for the study of scholars; their appraisal, while demanding an understanding of the circumstances and persons that gave them expression, is primarily a matter of the authenticity of texts, the chronology of events. In the case of the beatification and canonisation of saints in the modern period, indeed, the Roman decrees, arrived at after a scrupulous examination of evidence, provide an exact account of the reasons for public veneration of these holy ones of the Church. Yet even here there are innumerable factors, reflected in popular devotion, which can scarcely be looked for in a legal document. But in the earlier ages of the history of the Church, and especially in its remoter provinces, the cultus of the saints necessarily lacked that careful regulation which nowadays is taken for granted.

French Canada is a decided asset to Canada, and the existence of the French Canadians of great political and cultural significance to America. French-speaking Canadians overflow the boundaries of the Province of Quebec, spill down into the New England States, down into the Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, and are increasing in ever growing numbers across the broad top of Ontario, and along the vast flat spaces of the Prairie Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. They are amongst the few peoples in the world who have assimilated western culture and have an increasing birth-rate. From the comparatively small group of French emigrants who established themselves in Lower Canada three hundred years ago, the French Canadians today number over three and a half millions. This phenomenal increase is so extraordinary that it is worth pointing out that at one time the French Canadians had the highest birth-rate in the world. It has fallen much lower in recent years although it is still relatively much higher than that of its English-speaking neighbour Province of Ontario.

The history of the word ‘poetry’ seems to me most instructive. Only quite recently has it begun to mean poetry, in our sense; formerly it meant art, the activity of the productive reason, and in this sense it was discussed by Aristotle and Antiquity and by our own classical period. One might say that the word had gradually threaded its way through the body, so to say, of poetry and reached at last into its soul, to the point where it touches the spirit; so that from the metaphysician’s point of view the perspectives have altered with time. This is the natural outcome of the fact that poetry has only recently, in the poets at least, begun to reflect on itself explicitly and deliberately. The reflection, once begun, is endless.

An increasing consciousness of the self is one of the main laws governing human history, and it arises directly from the nature of spiritual activity. According to traditional philosophy the mind is characterised by its ability to make a complete return to itself; the essential thing being not the return, but the grasp or penetration of self by self which accompanies it. Reflexion is of the essence of the spirit; it grasps itself by itself and passes right through itself. Hence, in culture, the general importance of the phenomenon of becoming conscious.

The doctrine of man as the Imago Dei has been brought out into the forefront of theological speculation in recent years, especially by Emil Brunner and Karl Barth; and Catholic theologians fully admit that Christian tradition needs to be re-explored before an adequate theological statement can be made in the face of the existentialist writers. The great problem, of course, is how can the two apparently irreconcilable trends in Christian tradition be synthesised without prejudice to the truth which each enunciates. How, in short, can the classic theory of St. Augustine be reconciled with the far too little known Imago Christi stress of Tertullian and St. Irenaeus? The latter school taught that man was made to the image of God in the sense that he was made after the pattern of the Christ coming in the flesh to redeem mankind : this school therefore strongly stresses the corporal likeness as a basic element in the Image doctrine. St. Augustine on the other hand, basing himself on a subtle analysis of the nature of the ‘mens,’ contends that man is made to the image of the Trinity itself, and carries in his soul a reflection of the divine life. This theory is then concerned to emphasise man’s spiritual nature as the most important element in the Imago doctrine.