It is a characteristic feature of this time of transition in which we are living that the subject of Christian Unity is being discussed almost universally. Catholic and nonCatholic can write of it and proffer suggestions without arousing too serious an outburst of protest. For Methodists and Presbyterians the matter has passed from the stage of discussion to the goal of accomplished fact. Anglicanism with an eye to the future rather than the past is entering a new phase of comprehensiveness by proclaiming itself as a bridge providentially built to span the gulf between Catholicism and Protestantism. Of necessity Catholics remain materially unaffected by the movement, conscious as they are of the complete Unity of the Church in which they are visibly incorporate; nevertheless there remains a wide margin where we can express our views and opinions with regard to Christian Unity and the means of attaining it. Many of us take our views ready-made upon this subject from the Catholic Press, and save ourselves the trouble of thinking any further about it. It is so splendid to be told that we Catholics, standing secure behind the battlements, can look down with happy serenity upon the struggling disorder of warring sects below. If the warring sects cease to struggle, and achieve a formula of unity, what is our reaction? The ‘battlement feeling’ makes us perhaps uneasy because the non-Catholic bodies are not quite playing the game: they should be continuing the struggle, so that we could happily continue to draw the moral!

By capability is meant the physical or psychological power of performing an act.

By responsibility is meant the moral (as distinct from the physical) necessity of performing an act.

Physical or bodily powers incapable of moral necessity are incapable of responsibility.

A power that is incapable of an act may be responsible for an act, if it has (i) physical, (2) psychological, or (3) moral power over another power which is capable of the act.

(1) Physical? The human will is not capable of cutting a human throat. A knife is capable of cutting a human throat. But a human will using a knife is responsible for cutting a human throat. In other words a human will has not the capability but has the responsibility of cutting or not cutting a human throat. .

(2) Psychological. The feet have the capability of walking but not of hearing or of seeing. The ears have the capability of hearing but not of seeing or of walking. The eyes have the capability of seeing but not of walking or of hearing. The human will has the capability neither of walking nor hearing nor seeing.

Now the feet which have the capability of walking are not responsible for walking. The ears which have the capability of hearing are not responsible for hearing. The eyes which have the capability of seeing are not responsible for seeing.

But the human will which cannot walk nor hear nor see can move (or not move) the feet to walk, the ear to hear, the eye to see.

Therefore the human will which has not the capability of walking, hearing seeing, has the responsibility of walking, hearing, seeing.

Tribute to St. Thomas More

Europe has gone out of Christendom. There are still perhaps Christian nations, whatever this may mean to-day, there is a strong though disunited Christian tradition living in many millions of people and representing, through them, a power of public import still, there is the Church Catholic, and many other forms of “organized religion.” But Europe has gone out of Christendom four hundred years ago. This is not merely another way of saying that the sixteenth century saw the break-up of the formal religious unity it had possessed throughout the Middle Ages. Europe is not merely the name of a continent and a mere factual unit based on the neighbourhood of nations and peoples living within its boundaries. Mr. Christopher Dawson in his admirable work The Making of Europe and others of his books has recovered the true meaning and significance of what Europe has been in the history of mankind—not the natural scene of the lives of peoples like any other similar scene, but Christendom. The religious revolution of the sixteenth century was from the religious and Catholic point of view the gravest event, but it had no less grave accompaniments in fields quite beyond the strictly religious domain. Nor was the Reformation the sole cause—it was in fact just as much an effect. England might never have gone beyond breaking up the ties, with Henry VIII, that bound her up into Christendom, and yet have severed herself from the most living reality of a thousand years of European history.

It was Sir Thomas More who realized that most clearly, “lam not bound, my lord, to confirm my conscience to the counsel of one realm against the general counsel of Christendom,” he said during his trial. In this case it was not the Saint himself that was defendant, it was Christendom.

It is no new thing for attacks to be made upon the Public Schools, and although many of the arguments are, I believe, specious, there is a sufficient body of solid and well-considered criticism which should and must be fairly met, if schools of the older tradition are to survive; and I would like to try, in the short space available, briefly to take stock of the position and attempt to justify a system which many students of education believe to be obsolete. The angle of attack has, I think, shifted in recent times; the argument which was once very prevalent was the complaint that schools turn out all their boys to one pattern, individuality and originality being sacrificed in the process. Few people denied that the pattern was a good one, but it was felt by critics that any deviation from the set model was regarded with undue suspicion and dislike. This argument has lost some of its force to-day, because conditions have changed and public opinion in a school is far more lenient towards diversity of outlook and difference of taste; certainly it is not true now, and I much doubt if it ever was, that a boy interested in the fine arts, music or poetry is regarded as a curious or undesirable person. Possibly the very friendly relations which exist in most modem schools between master and boy may have helped in this change, if it is not presumptuous for masters to hope that they do have a humane and civilizing influence.

Whilst there need be no doubt that the periodical efforts to resuscitate the question of ‘Reunion’ are motived by an earnest desire to re-establish the unity of the Church of Christ under One Head, there is a danger that the very word ‘Reunion’ may be understood in an unorthodox sense, based on a misconception of the Church. To extend sympathy to reunion as something different from Christian unity resting on the firm foundation of Peter would be to hold out a vain expectation calculated to keep those not in communion with the See of Peter away from the true faith. From this point of view stress cannot be laid too heavily on the incontrovertible fact that Catholics and Anglicans are divided on fundamental questions of Faith, and these questions are not solved, and cannot be solved, by conceding that the Reformation was perhaps partly due to the indifference of Catholics themselves. Nor must we run the risk of allowing this essential divergence to be glossed over in the attempt to establish friendly relations with those outside the true fold, even though this be through no fault of their own. If the word ‘reunion’ is taken to imply that the Anglican communion is a branch of the True Vine, or an entity not essentially different from the Roman Church, or that it has a corporate life maintained by Our Lord and His Holy Spirit, then it is a heretical term devoid of orthodox interpretation. In view of possible misunderstandings, therefore, it seems well to offer the following observations.

It is perhaps not without significance that in the several letters and decrees of the Holy See on the promotion of Christian unity the term ‘reunion’ itself, as well as the term ‘Church’ as applied to the Anglican body, is avoided.

Love of learning, or learning itself? Culture, or the acquisition of specialized knowledge? This is the great problem which faces every university in the modern age. Some, indeed, claim to have solved it to their own satisfaction. Others are still grappling with it.

The problem has been created by the passage of time and the opening up of fresh fields of thought and knowledge. Applying equally to both the old and the new worlds, it is of universal importance, inasmuch that on the solution of it depends the future, not merely of our educational systems, but of our civilization itself.

The university was essentially an invention of the Middle Ages, existing for one definite purpose. First and foremost it was a cultural institution; the acquisition of mere knowledge, as such, was of secondary and almost negligible importance.

Gale turned the luxurious pages of the tiny treatise with a sense of thrilled satisfaction. It was good to possess at last so capital a work as Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia, competently, exhaustively edited, printed in the best Italian tradition on paper of fine texture. He did not at once begin to read but enjoyed the sense of possession and of authority. So slight in size the corner piece of a now authoritative library. As he rose to find a place for the book on his shelves, a place that must be at once adequate and inevitable, he saw that the light had gone out of the summer evening. He forgot his shelves, leaving the book on the arm of a chair.

The rain came suddenly with a crash of thunder and a simultaneous flicker of lightning. The wonder of storms. From the window he could barely see the railings of the park, so fierce the fall of the rain. Immediate the stride of the storm. Here thundering at the door with its guns of water, and as suddenly would be gone and the world changed in a moment's bombardment. Somewhere at the back of his mind an uneasiness Cajetan would not solve. Sustained violence, an unthinkable thing. Natural causes, his mind told him, workaday, but powerful, tremendous.

The crash and assault of the rain beat the evergreens before his window, tore petals from the few flowers. Window panes aswim with switchback scenery. An early light wept lucidly, pools of yellow in the window frames. A man was standing, coat caught up to the chin, in the inadequate shelter of the grandiose pillared porch, gusts of rain sweeping his legs like impetuous brooms. Gale watched him slantwise through the blear panes. Trousers sodden: would run water soon. He thought of the bell; Thompson his servant; unfriendly? No, he would go to the door himself.

Our Western world is said to be looking for a religion: what is more certain is the pretty general feeling that life is an affair of surfaces, most of them monotonous, the others painful either for themselves or because their beauty is already flecked with decay; and following this feeling the desire for something to which our present experience is only penultimate. In this sense perhaps many would adopt the title of a recent book, God is my Adventure, an account in the best manner of religious journalism of some personalities outside the official religions who are supposed to have penetrated beyond the obvious into the background of life.

“It has added much,” confesses Dr. Hensley Henson, “to my too slight knowledge of the remarkable essays in spiritual exploration, which are certainly not the least impressive indication of the profound religious dislocation of our time.” Dislocation, the word is just; the figures in the book bear witness to it: emotion must disavow thought, or the other way round; the peaks of experience must spurn the lower ranges of life from which they rise; the individual is isolated from his social environment and historical antecedents: man is no longer catholic but peculiar; working in a tunnel not living in the universe.

Yet as sin is the choice of good out of place, so error is the pursuit of truth out of place, and Mr. Landau is alert to discover the value of the various messages. Sometimes he has to try hard, but never is he contemptuous; his criticism though keen is humble. Religious types are of many kinds, and not all his subjects are so intellectually impressive as Ouspensky or Steiner.

To accept authority is natural to man. Authority is a kind of status given to those who have proved themselves competent to exercise it, usually a confirmation of authority acquired by practice, but it may be accorded to the incompetent, it may be bought with political honours, and all desire its benefits. The “educated” classes have probably the firmest hold on economic authority, parents pay out large sums for the education of their children expecting some return, hence the Government is obliged to maintain a large number of appointments to which no one who has not qualified through these educational channels has access. It is worth while investing some thousands of pounds in a college course if it secure your child in a good job at the end of it. Nevertheless the authority for which there is the greatest respect is that of talent and ability. The student is not only thinking of ultimate securities but preparing himself to serve his neighbours with medicine, legal advice, bread, boots, houses, lessons in astronomy, even to shrive, anoint and decently bury them. Most men hope to be producers of benefits or goods and not receivers only, they consider themselves fortunate when they have a natural love of the work to be done and unhappy when insensitive of any particular affinity with it.

Hence, in the order of authority which goes with merit, there are two classes: those who work for the work’s sake and those who labour only for a reward outside the work.

It is with the first class with which I am here concerned. Where there is love of the work there is an intuitive power denied to those who acquire proficiency merely by the exercise of the will.

A Letter from the Anglican Bishop of Chichester on May 30 of this year raised an interesting question. “In his speech on May 21,'’ he wrote, “Hitler made a great point of his strong desire for the friendliest relations with the British people. But the British people are lovers of freedom and loathe and abhor religious persecution. Their friendship cannot be won while freedom is denied and religious persecution prevails.” And noting that Hitler has proclaimed that Germany can give a lasting contribution to the great work of bringing about a resurrection of the West, he pointed out that “the resurrection of the Occident is not to be achieved by making the race principle into a religion, and attempting to substitute it for the Christian faith which has given its distinctive character to our common Western civilization and which has been the source and inspiration of many of its highest values.”

These firm and clear words had immediately a considerable echo, and an interesting discussion followed in the Times and other papers. Dissenting voices were not lacking, some speaking from the purely political standpoint, others from that of psychology. The former remarked that friendship between peoples is a matter of mutual interest that has nothing to do with community of ideas or sentiments, but is governed simply by utility. The latter feared that blame or criticism of the methods of Hitler and his government could serve no purpose and would only aggravate the sufferings of those persecuted for their religion or race.

In the programme of “The Field is Won,” the play recently performed in honour of our new English Saints, the mime is referred to as “a means of education.” Although the phrase was inserted to appease the taxer of entertainments (thus saving many pounds to the producer) it is also true if, by education, we mean the drawing out of what is there and not the hammering in of what is not already present in the child’s being. Mime is the art of sign language, a language which existed even before the Tower of Babel and must last as long as man has the power of movement and sense of sight. It is used by Almighty God and is the daily language of His Church. It is also the daily language of policemen, publicans, soldiers, schoolmasters and others who command or serve.

It is only of late years that Communism has come to excite an emotion rather than an opinion. . . . Until a decade or two ago, it distinguished itself from Socialism in that it dealt with distribution or consumption whereas Socialism concerned the mode of production: and whereas Socialism was a theory of economics the appeal of Communism was to sentiment, one might even say to religion. Their common ground lay solely in a recognition of the equality of Man. But it was Communism that associated itself with the now century-old hope of the perfectibility of Man.

Historically Communism was of course forborne by such as the Essenes, whose economy of life was however inspired by the urge to escape (rather than repair) social ills. They are described by Philo: “None had his own house but shared his dwelling with all. Living in colonies they threw upen their doors to all their sect that came their way. They had a common storehouse, common expenditure, common garments, common food (syssitia). They gave what they earned to a common fund for the support of the unfit.”

The Communist colonies of last century were ineffectual enough and are notable largely in that their origin was philanthropic and motived, if not by pessimism, at least by the urge to escape.

Communism, as we know it, was anticipated in literature only by a Saint—in the Utopia of Thomas More. Here was a state in many respects indistinguishable from the economy of the Soviet, comprising four million souls, superintended

The season will shortly be coming round when, in sympathy with the resurrection of life around, some ebullience in the blood moves all sorts of people to be on the wander. Some will be lacing on nailed shoes and gripping sticks to get up into the hills; some will be fitting out small boats to be away to sea; some will be throwing handbags into dickys and luggage racks, or climbing, armed with a day’s rations, into charabancs. But one and all are moved by the same pleasantly impatient spirit: Wanderlust.

This brings to our mind one of the Church’s ‘Canonizations,’ one of the triumphs of that triumphant humanism by which it admits even the life we share with the animals to partake in acts of worship which it teaches have an eternal significance. It has canonized Wanderlust by the institution of pilgrimages to shrines. He is now ‘Saint Wanderlust.’ He has lesser forms in the everyday desire to be up and moving, if it be only up the hill or about the town, which the Church has canonized by such institutions as processions, or the round of the Stations in Rome, or the Stations of the Cross up the hill at Pantasaph —with the view at the top. He has one supreme form in the Spring Wanderlust, which the poet noted when he said that spring was the time of pilgrimages. So he has been taught the way to shrines.

There are, of course, things much more profound that lie behind the institution of shrines than this harnessing of a mere stirring in the blood. Sometimes, as at Lourdes, they are of immediate divine institution. Sometimes even when of human institution they are the occasion of the granting of many favours, even of the working of miracles, as is apparently the case at Carfin; and hence of a great increase of devotion.

In the meandering of mankind through the ages the stream of vitality has flown back and forth from one system of life to its opposite. At present we seem to be in a transitional period when the main stream is sweeping back from individualism to an extreme collectivism. Since the Reformation men have done violence to their social nature by attempting to work out their own salvation independently of others. There were times when this seemed to be the only way of achieving any vital movement, since the alternative of cooperation and corporal unity lay apparently dead among a heap of legalities and impositions from a tyrannous authority. The reign of the individualist, however, though it made many new and valuable conquests, could not endure for long, for of its nature it was doomed to fall to pieces. Now we see a return to co-operation, to the united efforts of many men sharing one ideal. This is glaringly obvious in the dictatorships supported by the enthusiasm of the people, and in the growing solidarity of Communism; but it appears in religious spheres as well, in such movements as those of the Groups or leading to the absurdity of Christian and Jew attempting to find a common religious basis in a symposium entitled “In Spirit and Truth.”

Though the true Christianity of the Catholic Church has always been essentially social, it was inevitable that it should have been influenced to some extent by the common outlook on life. The stress was laid on the relations between the individual soul and God, while the idea of brotherhood in Christ, though not forgotten, was put in the background. The return of vitality in other spheres to the sense of fellowship and co-operation of men in society has been the occasion of a revival of interest in the social character of the Church.

The Catholic concept of religion is radically different from most others because it is born of the realization that the true function of religion is the unique fulfilment of a need rooted in the very essence of human nature. This difference is shown in practice by the willingness of the Catholic to submit to the guidance of the Church, primarily of course in matters supernatural, whether of Faith or Morals, but also in matters which do not appear to have any direct connection with ‘religion.’ He is ready to recognize the wise authority of the Church in every department of human life whenever the Church sees fit to offer judgment or advice, even though he is aware that such pronouncements are not infallible expressions of revealed truth nor coercive of his assent.

Then we are priest-ridden after all? No, decisively no, it is not that. The truth is that the Catholic recognizes the true function of the Church and its true relation to human life. He looks upon the Church not as representing only a section of his life that is rigidly separated from his daily affairs. He looks upon it not merely as a place where he spends a perfunctory half hour or so on a Sunday, not as a sort of sedative and balance to the rush and clamour of secular affairs. He knows full well that it provides the means of fulfilling an urgent need of his very nature. Far from being extrinsic to his ordinary daily life, he knows that it is the only thing that can save human life from becoming in reality the futile meaningless thing it so often appears to be. He knows that without the Church a man is like one blind, groping about aimlessly unaware of the pitfalls on every side, who knows that he is in a desperate plight and without hope.

The work of the philosopher may be considered fundamentally from two points of view: as an activity directed to an object which is of its nature an end and pointing to nothing outside itself, or as concentrated upon an object to be regarded as a bonum utile, a means to be employed to some further purpose. Accordingly as either of these tendencies predominates will the mind receive, so to say, its determination and character, its philosophical habitus. For those who accept the first point of view philosophy will be an activity formally of the speculative intellect, essentially contemplative; for those who accept the second it will be an exercise of the practical intelligence, a work, in a sense, artistic and creative.

It will hardly be questioned that for St. Thomas Aquinas the object of the speculative intellect, truth (or being as known) can never be subjected to any kind of intellectual utilitarianism; for the contemplation of truth is the supreme end of man, an end which alone gives point and meaning to all subordinate activities, itself, in an ultimate and sublime sense, completely useless. Consistently then with this view, if the philosopher engages in the practical work of teaching, his task is not one of rendering the transcendental order acceptable to the tastes of his disciples, but of leading their minds to the contemplation of truth in its essential clarity by subtilizing and strengthening their native powers of apprehension; fortificando virtutem intellectivam; in this way he participates, in his own degree, in the angelic activity of “illumination”: illuminare nihil aliud est quam manifestationem cognitae veritatis alteri tradere (Summa Theol. I, cvi, i).

We are in danger of misunderstanding the nature of the resistance to spiritual revival if we fall too easily into the mental habit of classifying a position by its philosophic implications. It needs very little proving to show that materialism, commercialism, are opposed to the stress of Christian living, and little more to show that these two definable ’isms are identifiable in the bourgeois position. The point is that the doctrinal analysis discloses not so much the position itself as its doctrinal relations, while the blind force which stands over against us is hardly probed. It is not in the main an intellectual thing that we fight. It is a cunning thing, but that is another matter. Its stubborn resistance is not of the mind. Not so much, therefore, is it belief in the wrong things that opposes the arduous quickenings of the life of Christ; it is rather desire of the wrong things. If you ask the Enemy of the Absolute what he believes in, he is as likely to reply Credo in unum Deurn as anything else. If the most comprehensive statement could be made of the heresy implicit in the bourgeois position, it is doubtful whether you could find one single bourgeois to subscribe to it. A more successful result might be obtained from a table of practical maxims, for the enemy is a practical man. That is his first attribute. He is the man of business, of affairs, the pragmatist. Not that he would tolerate the elaboration of his pragmatism into a philosophy or a religion. His heart has its own reasons for its religious choice, and these do not include the need for intellectual valuations of the acts of living.

These letters have already been much reviewed; I briefly endorse, and need not repeat in detail, the well-deserved compliments which have been paid to their editor and their publishers. I can best show my sense of the book’s importance by treating some questions which a first reading has suggested.

It is natural to refer at once to those passages in the letters which discuss the technique of poetry, and especially the technique of Father Hopkins himself. Many readers, I think, have found obscurities in the author’s preface to his poems; and here some of the letters of Dixon are of great help. It is good, for instance, to have the vague reference to nursery rhymes supplemented by an analysis of Ding Dong Bell. Two unsatisfactory things remain. One is the use of the name ‘counterpoint’ for inversion of accent—this is hardly a difficulty, but it is an abuse of terms. The other is really a difficulty—an inconsistency in the use of the very important term ‘sprung rhythm.’ In one letter Hopkins says: ‘This then is the essence of sprung rhythm; one stress makes one foot, no matter how many or few the syllables’; later he says: ‘The word Sprung which I use for this rhythm means something like abrupt and applies by rights only where one stress follows another running, without syllable between.’

We keep finding that Catholic enterprises fail because there is no public opinion, and no business-sense, about them. There is a public opinion, for example, about Lourdes and the value of going there on pilgrimage. There is, to a considerable extent, a public opinion about Catholic schooling. There is to some extent a public opinion, now, about SS. John Fisher and Thomas More; but, if I may risk mentioning a personal impression, not all the heroic work of Mgr. Hallett and of others who so long toiled for their canonization, suceeded in creating it: perhaps it was largely due to the determination of the Holy Father that two men, who clearly deserved to be canonized, should be canonized. A kind of “public opinion” in the sense of a Catholic opinion, i.e., not confined to one nation nor universal in any one nation, to the effect that most religious Art is bad, and that the Liturgy is good, seems to be forming itself. An ecclesiastical “general” opinion certainly seems to be growing up, to the effect that Mass should be preached in a different way, that St. Paul should be studied increasingly, and that the doctrines of grace and incorporation with Christ (and all their consequences) should be made more of in and even out of retreats or convent-exhortations. Nuns keep telling one that “retreats are quite different from what they used to be.” Maybe writers like Abbot Marmion, Abbot Vonier, Fr. Prat, Karl Adam, are outstanding figures among those who have helped towards this. Abbot Chapman, Fr. R. Steuart, and others, have alike witnessed to and assisted a somewhat new and “general” appetite in the matter of prayer; and it is quite obvious that Blackfriars from its very beginning has similarly witnessed to and fostered a better conscience in what concerns social justice.

The word “milieu” is one of those expressive French words which, to a large extent, defies translation into English. In the present connection it might be rendered, though inadequately, as the sphere of life, the atmosphere, the surroundings or the environment in which the individual Catholic habitually finds himself. If he is an apostle of Catholic Action it must be largely in this milieu, in these surroundings, that he exercises his apostolate. Hence the word “milieu” is of supreme importance to the proper understanding of Catholic Action, as the actual sphere of life is to the exercise of the apostolate.

For Catholic Action is essentially conditioned by the circumstances of our natural human lives. It is indeed precisely because the priest cannot enter into certain circles and so supernaturalize the lives of those who frequent them that the Pope appeals to the laity to take up this task and continue amongst their own friends and working companions the apostolate of the hierarchy. “In order to bring back to Christ these whole classes of men who have denied Him, we must gather and train from amongst their very ranks auxiliary soldiers of the Church . . . the first and immediate apostles of the working-men must themselves be workingmen, while the apostles of the industrial and commercial world should themselves be employers and merchants.” The apostolate must be exercised, according to the Pope, in the circles of our every-day life. It is only natural. Rightly or wrongly there are class-differences and the life and interests of one class are different from those of another. In our democratic country it is easier than elsewhere to move from one class to another and to find oneself accepted in a class higher than that into which one was born, but it is quite impossible to enter into one sphere of life and exert an influence there while remaining to a great extent in another.