Star differeth from star in glory, says St. Paul, and we are well accustomed to variations, amounting sometimes almost to contradictions, in style and type and expression of holiness as exhibited by the lives of those whom the Church has officially pronounced to be saints, to be persons, that is, who are proved to have practised the Christian virtues— not on occasional impulse, but with such regularity as fairly deserves to be called habitual — in a heroic degree: in a degree (that means) which is conspicuously above what is recognized as constituting a normally good life. But even with this preparation one is scarcely ready to accept Bernadette of Lourdes as a saint, for at first sight (and perhaps increasingly with further acquaintance) her life presents itself to us as so remarkably devoid of the features demonstrably common to all the other saints known to us, that it is a real difficulty to associate her with them. A well-known authority on this subject, whose judgment and critical ability meet with respect in all quarters, has given it as his considered opinion that ‘in all the annals of sanctity it would be hard to find the counterpart of the history of Bernadette Soubirous for, he continues,’ she did nothing Out of the common, she said nothing memorable, she gathered no followers around her, she had in the ordinary sense no revelations, she did not prophesy or read men’s secret thoughts, she was remarkable for no great austerities or striking renunciations or marvellous observance of rule or conspicuous zeal for souls . . . and yet she is to be proclaimed a saint . . . and for all future time, as long as this earth shall last, the Holy Sacrifice will be offered in her honour, and petitions will be addressed to her to intercede with God, the common Father of us all, to bless the creatures who are the work of His hands.’

When I go to the pictures my object is usually to avoid thought rather than to induce it; but on most occasions it is difficult to escape one reflection at any rate: that there is an inevitable connection between money and art, just as there is between money and religion; and that the connection does not always work out fortunately.

In its dealings with art, the Money Power is just as greedy and unintelligent as with everything else. When a really good picture comes out of Hollywood, as it sometimes does, one feels that the producer has managed to do it. in spite of, not because of, his financial employers. They say that Mr. Montagu Norman has a pretty taste in antiques or old masters or whatever it is, and rumours of striking and original sculpture on the Bank’s new buildings have reached even my Philistine ears. That may be so. Nevertheless, in its relation to culture in general the banking system is more stupid and boorish than the ox that sets his uncaring hoof on the first cluster of primroses. If there are too many cinemas and not enough schools, if living musicians starve and tinned music assails the tortured ear, if villages of bungalows are built on the skyline of the downs, if new slums are being built under pretence of slum clearing, if the English countryside is laid waste by ruthless industrialism-where is the ultimate blame if not on the credit-system which ‘finds the money” for such developments and insists on ‘getting it back’?

Awareness of the enemy’s method usually tempts one to imitate him, to meet tanks with larger tanks and poison gas with a gas even more poisonous. It is not a process which I commend. It would seem wiser to develop one’s own genius than to copy another’s, especially when that other is an enemy. The Church can hardly be interested in a Five Year Plan, nor enthusiastic about shock troops, while she has eternity to play in. Unless the Communist gets quick results he knows he will have none; he knows, in his heart, that all mankind is but waiting to relapse into its old bad ways.

The Catholic stage has powers hardly dreamt of by the Soviet, and were it elevated to an arm of Catholic Action, it would quickly achieve the same position in propaganda as it held when the people of Chester, York and other cities of England turned out

A case decided in the High Court in November, 1933, can be reckoned another and final stage in the gradual process of freeing bequests for the saying of masses from legal restrictions imposed on account of their purpose. In spite of the passing of the Catholic Relief Act of 1829, gifts made for a Catholic purpose have been strictly controlled by the law and it is only by several steps culminating in the case of In re Caus (Times Law Reports, 1933; Vol. 50, 80) that they are now almost entirely free of legal fetters. In the following account of the law on this topic an attempt is made to trace the various stages in its somewhat complicated develoment.

The law, thought for so long to have been settled by the ruling case of West v. Shuttleworth in 1835 (2 My. and K. 684), was based on the Chantries Act, 1547. Mass, and gifts for the purpose of having it said, were of course recognized by the common law as part of the religion of the country before the Reformation. The Chantries Act, however, contained a severe condemnation of the doctrines of purgatory and the mass, directing that property disposed of within five years before the passing of the Act, for the purpose of enabling mass to be said, should be forfeited to the Crown. But the Act did not prohibit such gifts for the future. The idea, nevertheless, that gifts in support of priests, and for having masses said for the soul of a deceased person, were made illegal by this enactment spread among lawyers.

Just as a particular life, though largely conditioned by material needs, is on occasion given a new direction by unpredictable forces of religion, culture, election and whim, so general history is determined by the stresses set up by forces that economics cannot measure, by the opposition of spiritual ideas, the incalculable action of personalities, the tendencies of the acquired prejudices, conventions and enthusiasms of a period. The econoinic interpretation of history, indispensable as it is, must appear singularly partial when applied to the sixteenth century. It is the merit of a recent book of Reformation studies — The Reformation and the Contemplative Life—to relate a wide and learned selection of facts to a significant aspect of the time, and to watch them in the medium of biographical religious psychology.

The first impression of many priests on reading A Catholic Plea for Reunion ‘ is likely to be: Why! here is a man saying a number of things which I have often said myself or heard others say; and putting them on paper with a lack of qualification that usually characterizes the convivial talk of common-rooms and recreations, but without the air of levity which makes things said in such circumstances very pardonable. There is a good deal here about the centralisation of the Church’s government, about the autocratic ways of our superiors, about the hair-splitting niceties f moral theology, about the multiplication of devotions and the frequency of the confessions of those who have nothing to confess, about the way of life and rules of nuns; all harmless enough in itself, though liable to be completely misunderstood by outsiders and when said with full seriousness generally betokening in the speaker a particular grievance or a disgruntled outlook on life.

All this forms the setting for a thesis fairly common on the Continent, but so uncommon here as to require in the writer’s eyes the protection of anonymity—the thesis of the Abbé Portal and Dom Lambert Beaudouin that corporate union between the Church of England and the Holy See is both possible and desirable, and that steps ought to be taken to facilitate the setting up of an Anglican Uniat Church in England side by side with the already existing Catholic organization.

The public, like the press, lives from day to day. It is not interested in labour disputes. Labour disputes are not news. It is only when a dispute threatens to end in a strike that headlines are given to it and interest is aroused. But then it is often too late. Tempers have been inflamed; the leaders on both sides have made statements, public statements, upon which, being self-respecting men, they cannot go back. The strike, whose threat made news, occurs, and there is more news; but the dispute which caused the strike has passed unnoticed. The student may find a reference to it tucked away in a corner of last month’s newspaper.

Perhaps that is why the present dispute in the railway industry has caused so little comment. It does not threaten a strike; it is concerned with the question of conciliation machinery, and one can hardly see how that can cause a strike. But the men are restive under wage cuts, the Companies will most certainly resist any claim for a wage advance, and that, in the absence of adequate machinery, might cause a strike.

Up to March 1st last conciliation machinery did exist. It had been set up under the Act of 1921, but the Companies, finding it unsatisfactory, gave notice of withdrawal in 1932, and on March 1st it ceased to function. It must be admitted that the machinery was unsatisfactory; the fiasco of 1932 is enough to prove that. Yet it did serve its purpose sufficiently to show the desirability, and indeed the necessity, of some machinery for settling disputes without an appeal to force.