The Twentieth Century is witnessing the rapid growth and development of two world-wide movements within the Catholic Church — the Liturgical Movement and Catholic Action. The close connexion between these two movements is not always appreciated, for both of them have been considerably misunderstood. The authentic Liturgical Movement is not just a rampage for quilismas and outsize chasubles; nor is authentic Catholic Action just a drive for Clean Films, still less a pretext for an intensified campaign of what has been called ‘ecclesiastical ballyhoo.’

On closer acquaintance it will be found that both these movements are instinct with the same idea—the renewal and increase of active participation by the laity in the life and work of the Church, the utilization to the full of the power conveyed by the Character of Baptism and, especially, of Confirmation. The chief objective of the Liturgical Movement is active lay participation in the Church’s worship; it is a revolt from the lamentable state of things which tended to make the layman little more than a passive spectator of the public worship of God. in favour of a return to the corporate congregational worship of the primitive Church. Catholic Action is formally and authoritatively defined by the Holy Father as (active) lay participation in the apostolate of the Hierarchy. It may be regarded as a revolt from the tendency to consider the layman as existing to be ministered unto but not to minister, a reaffirmation of his right and duty to take an active part in the Church’s official mission of salvation.

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.’

In the Preamble to the Covenant of the League of Nations it is stated that the League is brought into existence ‘to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security.’ The first article of the Covenant which is concerned with policy (Art. 8) deals with the reduction of armaments. The League Secretariat accepts disarmament as the touchstone of the work of organizing peace. Peace is the end and the extent to which the nations of the world approach that end is to be judged by the extent to which they approach disarmament.

Just as peace is the end of the League, so is the demand for peace its foundation. But, founded also on the Treaties of Peace, it is, like them, grounded in war, partaking of the conditions of war, its ambitions, its hatreds and fears. It has then to obey two masters who do not always agree. Itself a result of the last war, it is called upon to prevent the next.

The position is further complicated by the fact that the demand for peace is itself largely a result of the War. Nothing so widespread and at the same time so deep has been known before as a force in international affairs. Though there was a demand for peace, nothing comparable existed before 1914. In England at least it did not exist until the Somme brought disillusionment, a disillusionment made more bitter by Paschendaele, March, 1918, and the submarine campaign. Born, too, of war, the demand for peace is based rather upon disgust and horror for the one than upon love for the other.

The publication of this collection of Papal pronouncements and correspondence relating to the union of Christendom could not have been better timed. The explosion of ‘Father Jerome’s’ squib has alone been sufficient to blow away whatever cobwebs may have been thought to have gathered round Satis Cognitum and Apostolicae Curae. The new Anglican endeavour towards understanding with Christians on the Continent through the pages of (Ecumenica makes the reappearance of Leo XIll’s utterances about the A.P.U.C. and Pius XI's Mortalium Animos singularly opportune.

Quite apart from the authority which belongs to these documents, an authority which establishes them permanently as the basis of every Catholic endeavour to forward the union of Christendom, they possess an intrinsic quality which puts them in a place which is unique in the literature of reunion. It is nothing less than a burning passion for the cause of Christian unity which flames up in Pope Leo's Encyclical Praeclara Gratulationis and his moving letter to the English People Amantissima Voluntatis. Despite the formal language of pontifical docunicnts, which reads so stiffly in translation, it is difficult to find a parallel in the writings of Catholic or non-Catholic reunionists to the warmth of Pope Leo’s appeals.

The reason is not far to seek. For Leo XIII the unity of Christendom was a matter not merely of expediency, however urgent, though nobody realized better than he did, as pages of Praeclara Gratulationis show, how urgent was the need for unity in the face of modern conditions.

The period of the visible expansion of Catholicism in England which began with the Oxford Movement and the Irish Immigration may be considered to have closed with the nineteenth century. Through the converts the Church entered the professional and upper middle-classes, and through the Irish began to leaven the new industrial masses. But tho old English Catholics, though a minority in the Catholic population and despite the many changes introduced by elements foreign to their tradition, possessed the national stubbornness and power of assimilation; they preserved their type, remained the nucleus of the developing and extending temporal life of the revived Church, and largely determined its character. Ullathorne was perhaps the most representative Catholic figure of the period: by the time of his death, the Church was assuming its present form, was already an established institution in the national life, no longer an obscure sect but ranking among the four or five great religious bodies in the country. Since then the effort has been one of consolidation; the various elements in the Church have become more and more unified—partly as the result of time, partly of prudent government; a Catholic middle-class has emerged; internal organization has been perfected—education, the press, religious and cultural institutions; so that now the Church presents the spectacle of a going concern, well-run and secure, somewhat mysterious and exclusive to the outsider, a compact homogeneous body, with every appearance of being well-established, perhaps even entrenched.

But the more excellent a human tradition, the more marked is the tendency to become a privilege and a preserve.

Luminous shadow and dusky light.—We, who are not poets, but who dare to maintain that poetry is an essential element of our intellectual life, are just now the somewhat helpless witnesses of a discussion in which we are not invited to take a part; a discussion of experts; and yet a discussion in which we are deeply interested even if we be kept outside it.

There are two parties to that discussion; one for whom poetry has, essentially, no relation to thought, but springs from an emotion of the soul of the poet which he transmits to his hearers in words, indeed, but not in any kind of definite thought; the other, and older school, for whom thought is not, indeed, the whole of poetry, but is certainly one of its elements, and is of its very essence.

To take, first, the former school, as presented by one or two of its leading advocates.

Mr. A. E. Housman says: The human faculty which dominated the eighteenth century and informed its literature was the intelligence, and that involved, as Arnold says, ‘some repressing and silencing of poetry’ And again: When I examine my mind and try to discern clearly in the matter, / cannot satisfy myself that there are any such things as poetical ideas.

Again, although it is almost impossible to find pure unmingled poetry, poetry independent of meaning, yet meaning is of the intellect, poetry is not.

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’?

It is exactly thirty years ago that the first of the now famous Semaines Sociales de France was held in Lyons. Since then sessions—annual, except during the War—have been held of this perambulating Catholic University in all the regions of France: the twenty-sixth session was held this year in Nice (July 23 to 29). In 1932, at Lille, the theme treated was economic; last year, at Rheims, political; this year the official title of the subject was Social Order and Education. The title puzzled not a few, myself included: and it is only now that in retrospect I seem to grasp its full meaning. At Lille and Rheims the principles of economic and political science, as embodied in Catholic doctrine, had been admirably stated—principles, which have only to be applied, to end the economic and political anarchy of our age. But the anarchy continues; the principles are not applied. Why? Because our age does not know them; because an education is needed. It is only through education that we can move towards an ordered Society: Par I’éducation vers I’ordre social chrétien was in fact the title of the President’s inaugural address at Nice.

‘Christianity has been tried two thousand years and has failed,’ say our neo-pagans. No, we retort, it has never failed, whenever it has been tried: the trouble is, that it has so rarely been tried. Individually, yes, it has been and is being tried: but socially?

The film industry to-day is a huge commercial organization involving something like £500,000,000 of capital, of which about four-fifths is invested in the United States, and this industry stretches itr great bulk into every corner of the globe. It caters for all classes of people; it provides comfort, cheapness and continuity of performance, as well as recreation, distraction and relaxation after the daily monotony of business and working hours. It transplants the visitors into a new world of surroundings (very often, however, to the detriment of home life), and exerts an influence far beyond the auditorium. It saves time and money in buying and reading books, and, in some cases, supplies the mind with an increase of knowledge of other nation', races, countries, their customs and manners, and this without appealing to any intellectual exertion on the part of the visitor.

If we pause for a moment to consider the work conditions in Hollywood, the most important hive of the industry. we gather from press reports and other eve-witness accounts that the atmosphere brought about by scandal and divorce is not at all conducive to persons fit for theresponsihilitv of producing world entertainment. Such an attitude towards life is bound to show itself in the work. The standards of morality, whether of the performers, producer, director or scenarist, express themselves most clearly in the films they make. If these people disregard the real issue between self-control and immoral self-gratification it seems to follow that they view life in one aspect only, and therefore are incapable of giving the world true art through this powerful medium.

Poetic Experience surely provides what Mr. Herbert Read was looking for. And in a more conclusive and final way than the hints and suggestions he found in the works of M. Bergson. The sub-title is An Introduction to Thomist Aesthetic. The claim is amply justified in the argument by its close and constant use of the principles of St. Thomas.

The scope of the book is wide. It deals with poetic experience in general, and seeks to chart its position in the Thomist system. This it does by insisting on a particular aspect and a special relation of familiar Thomist principles. Atmosphere is given by the appearance of such names as Billuart, Cajetan and Durandus, until one is almost led to expect some familiar quotation from Zigliara.

We have become so accustomed, at least in English works on aesthetics, to arguments in a strange and unintelligible idiom. Unrecognizable principles and intangible conclusions are all too familiar. Since Mr. Clive Bell wrote Art a sort of superficial idiom has been established. Prospectuses issued by educational authorities now speak in terms of ‘significant form.’ But there is no generally accepted meaning of these terms. The importance and the great value of this book lies in the fact that its conclusions are related to familiar landmarks. They cannot be dismissed as ‘somewhere in Ruritania.’

In brief, the argument is this. Knowledge in its perfection is union with a concrete thing. In its normal life the reason only partially achieves this end.

We are all familiar with a number of societies and associations which pursue their peculiar missions under the guidance of the Church. There are the Confraternities and Third Orders which promote self-sanctification, there are the works for the formation of the young; others which, like the S.V.P., provide material assistance to the poor, while the Guilds are concerned with professional interests. Lastly there are the societies concerned with larger questions of propaganda and defence of principles, such as the Catholic Truth Society, Catholic Evidence Guild and Catholic Social Guild. They all play an invaluable part in the life of the Church, and they depend upon the laity for success. They all aim more or less directly at the spiritual welfare of souls. So it would seem that they must be entitled to consider themselves part of Catholic Action since this is, according to the Pope’s definition, ‘nothing other than the participation of the laity in the apostolate of the hierarchy.’ To question this may at first sight seem excessively punctilious. But when it is seen that the distinction between the strict use of the term and its haphazard bestowal can and should be made it will, perhaps, be used with more caution than has been the case hitherto. If Catholic Action is to prove itself other than a new name for ‘the old firm’ or a fresh panacea such as our economists favour some little care will have to be used by responsible authorities.

It is only as the consequence of a misunderstanding that some seek for a detailed social policy in the encyclicals of the Popes. One must not expect to find in them a pronouncement in favour of protection or free trade, a discussion of various monetary systems with a decision in favour of one of them, or even an exhortation to introduce the Eight Hours working day. As Leo XIII and Pius XI have repeatedly said, their intervention in the field of social reconstruction is based entirely on their official duty to safeguard and promote religion and morality, both of which are necessarily involved in the organization of society. The Popes make no claim to be economists or financiers, still less to be engineers or agriculturists; but they do most emphatically claim the right to lay down the moral principles which must be respected by all classes of mankind, and to point out the forms assumed by those principles in relation to the political, economic, financial and technical organization of society. Those who complain that such encyclicals as Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum or Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno do not enter into greater detail would do better to reflect on this illustration of the Church’s desire to leave as much liberty to individuals and States as she can without failing in her duty as guardian of the moral law. Given several alternative policies, any one of which may be pursued without any violation of morality, the Church is quite content to leave the choice between them to those who are entrusted with the care of national interests, or who have a part to play in the social mechanism by virtue of their economic functions.

The recent publication of ‘Fr. Jerome's’ A Catholic Plea for Reunion was unfortunate. It put forward, with great persuasiveness and candour, an unusual view of the Anglican problem, in a way calculated to rouse bristling hostility in those for whom Anglicanism is coloured by the prejudices of upbringing, and not likely to win acceptance even from those who have any real inside knowledge of the Church of England. Apart from its appearance without ecclesiastical sanction, ‘Fr. Jeroine's’ book showed considerable misapprehension of the religious situation in England, and in particular of the nature of the Church of England itself; it made at least one dangerous suggestion in regard to matters of Faith; moreover, its writer betrayed a disgruntled outlook, the result of some purely personal grievance, and this had the effect of discounting the value of much that he had to say.

So A Catholic Plea for Reunion was seized upon by the reviewers and commentators, much of it was justly, though perhaps over-violently, torn to shreds, and an unusual and even fruitful approach to the problem of Anglicanism was swamped in a flood of indignant condemnation.

The pages that follow are an attempt to restate ‘Fr. Jerome's’ main contention in a modified form and, it is hoped, without his misapprehensions of the situation. Ignorance of the nature of the Anglican problem can hardly be urged as an excuse for an explanation of the opinions of the present writer. He was born and brought up in the strictest of Anglican circles, and had passed through every phase of Anglo-Catholicism, from moderate High-Churchism to the most extreme pro-Romanism, before he saw by God's Grace that the religion he believed had only one divinely authorized Teacher on earth.