It is only right and proper in a world which seems to be going rapidly more and more insane that good Christians should make every effort to sound the recall to Reason. It is only our bare duty to reaffirm the elements and applications of the natural law in a world which seems to be becoming more and more insensible to the natural law. For this reason, it is impossible to over-estimate the debt we owe to those Catholic thinkers who have made it their task in recent years to re-state the natural ethics of war and peace and to apply it to modern conditions of international relationships and methods of warfare. It is salutary that the philosophia perennis of ends and means should be reasserted and applied realistically to new sets of facts such as aerial bombardment and bacteriological warfare, to the impending realities of war waged by the sovereign State conditioned by the exigencies of imperialistic capitalist economy.

Yet we shall be mistaken if, having done all these things, we imagine that we have done anything specifically Christian. We are perhaps too ready to call a Christian doctrine of war what are in fact only dictates of the natural reason. Grace does not destroy Nature; Revelation is not contrary to Reason. But the fact remains that we cannot give a distinctively Christian witness to the events in the world around us in terms solely of natural reason and natural law. Nor can I answer the burning question, ‘What am I as a Christian to do in the event of war?’ solely in terms of a natural ethic, however rigorous.

The election of Cardinal Pacelli to the throne of St. Peter has been acclaimed with unprecedented sentiments of satisfaction in both the Catholic and non-Catholic world. The lonely white figure crossing the already darkened basilica of St. Peter to pray at the tomb of the Apostle after his great decision, is symbolic of the man who has been providentially prepared by God to reign over the Church as Pius XII. His unmistakable ability, combined with a saintliness of life, could not fail to impress all who saw him. Even when placed in high station and surrounded with the pomp of the papal court, nothing seemed to disturb or distract the calm tranquillity of his soul deeply occupied with God. His linguistic ability combined with a fiery apostolic zeal particularly fitted him as an eloquent preacher. His sermons may still be read in various languages, but there was one which reveals the inner spirit of wisdom and the ideal he set before himself, so that his own life became a living sermon. This masterpiece of oratory was a panegyric preached on the occasion of the seventh centenary of St. Dominic, in the great Dominican Church of the Minerva, Rome. His text was taken from St. Paul, ‘Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine.’

‘Circuitus illi jam explosi sunt’, exclaimed St. Augustine, referring to ‘the crushing monotony of endless cycles, period succeeding period and recommencing period, without anything ever advancing,’ that theory of everlasting rebirth, and re-death, which the Indians call samsâra, and of which St. Augustine elsewhere says, ‘qua opinione quid horribilius cogitari possit, nescio.’ With the coming of Christ ‘that infernal cycle explodes. Something new incessantly takes place. The Universe has come into being, it really grows and reaches maturity. The world has also an end, thus has a meaning, a direction, a significance.’ With Christianity, thus for the first time, History becomes something to be explained and understood, and not merely something to be described and remembered; and with History proper there is also born the possibility of the new discipline of a Philosophy of History.

When the well-known Catholic publishing firm of Herder, in 1931, started its great series of a History of the Leading Nations (interrupted, of course, by the advent of Nazidom), the first volume bore the title The Meaning of History. In a profound and masterly manner its author there treated of all the problems falling under a Philosophy of History, without naturally attempting to give a concrete exposition of human history in the light of such ‘meaning.’ But this latter task has never ceased to fascinate, and frequent attempts at it have been made. That non-Christians and even atheists should have made it—vide Mr. H. G. Wells’ Outline—is amusing, and shows to what extent the whole world since the coming of Christ stands under the empire of Christian ideas, whether men are aware of it or not.

We have seen that the idea of war as the instrument of God’s judgment permeates the Bible from Genesis to the Apocalypse. It is the ruling idea which gives unity and consistency to the most ‘militarist’ as well as to the most ‘pacifist’ passages of Scripture, diverse historical situations and epochs calling forth diverse applications of that dominant conception. It now remains to suggest that this same idea has dominated the authentic Christian idea of war and attitude towards war throughout the changing circumstances of the situation of the Christian Church in the world. For just as this conception dominates the Scriptures from Genesis to the Apocalypse, so it has ever been uppermost in the authentic mind of the Church from the Apocalypse—which foresees wars as the outcome of the outpouring of the ‘vials full of the wrath of God’—to Benedict XV—who, in September, 1914, cried, ‘We beg and implore ... all the sons of the Church ... to beg that God, mindful of His mercy, may lay aside this scourge of anger with which He inflicts on the people the penalty of their sins.’

But just as, as we have previously said, we must avoid expecting to find in the Scriptures ready-made solutions to our present problems, so, if we would scan the pages of Christian history for light in our present perplexities, we must beware of expecting to find in them exact precedents for our present attitudes and conduct.

The Catholic engaged in the study of natural science is in some ways less well placed than any other student for growing into a full-blooded Christian. His subject is not one which provides obvious stimulation for his Catholic conscience. Its content and presentations are unaltered whether its exponents are Christians or not, and the student lacks the stimulus of that constant need of criticism and re-interpretation, which is provided, for instance, by the study of history. And it is undeniable that natural science when studied intensively easily produces a person hypertrophied in some respects and gravely lacking in Catholic fundamentals. Laboratory work occupies long hours which others would spend on general Catholic reading, and it is too easy to become caught up into a routine which contains little but science. Prayer and spiritual reading do not thrive when they have to be fitted precariously into short intervals saved from the rush. Work is not readily sacrificed to them, for there is severe overcrowding and economic pressure in the lower ranks of scientific workers. (This competition, incidentally, does not favour humility nor a true love of learning.) The manual work of the laboratory gives a certain balance to the scientist’s life, and this again tends to obscure the deficiencies of the latter on the spiritual level. Further, there are certain intellectual obstacles. If a Catholic scientist is intelligent enough to begin thinking about the nature of his scientific knowledge and comparing it with Thomist philosophy, he is liable to be oppressed by certain superficial divergences between the principles of Thomism and of physical science.

War is on every horizon to-day—a black cloud that, coming nearer, resolves itself into a swarm of enemy aircraft bringing death from the skies.

Fear of that black swarm is hypnotising half the civilised world, and there is no decent man or woman but detests the new horror it has brought into warfare, the Massacre of the Innocents. A dead or dying soldier on the battlefield is an ugly sickening fact, but it is possible to cover it with the decent cloak of duty or even to dress it with glory. The woman or the young child dying in torment amidst the ruins of a home is plain, unvarnished, abominable evil, beyond palliation, beyond glorification. Yet it is an inescapable part of war to-day. Spain has seen it; China has seen it; and where will modern war be waged without it?

The Catholic feels the utmost aversion from taking part in warfare that involves such horrors. If it be a necessity, it is a most evil one. But is it a necessity? There are Catholics who say it is no longer so, that modern warfare can never be justified. ‘War has become impossible,’ says Eric Gill, Catholic artist, writer and craftsman; ‘a just modern war is unthinkable,’ writes Father Gerald Vann, O.P.; and Father F. Stratmann, O.P., in a book, The Church and War considers that ‘modern warfare with the all-round ruin it brings must be immoral.’ The Catholic hating the barbaric methods of war to-day reads these and similar denunciations with sympathy but in growing perplexity of mind.

Daily duties are very ordinary things. But when done to serve the needs of the Body of Christ they have extraordinary value. No action of the day is trivial or unimportant to true Catholics, for every action done in Christ has ascetic value and leads to perfect union with Him. When the Christian miner plunges down the shaft he is really soaring to Heaven; his wife at home preparing the dinner is, like Martha, preparing a meal for Christ; every pace a Christian takes is another step towards Christ. The Christian Life is nothing more than growth in Christ, and unto Christ, by membership in His Mystical Body, and Christian Asceticism is the process of growth into a perfect man. This is the thesis of an excellent book which has recently been translated into English, and which has inspired these pages.

The analogy of the Mystical Body comes to us from St. Paul, who distinguishes an historical Christ Who was born of a woman, Who was crucified and rose from the dead; and a mystical Christ with Whom ‘we are buried unto death’ (Rom. vi, 4), and of Whose body we are members (I Cor. xii, 12). The complete mystical Christ is not He Who was born of Mary, but consists in Christ the Head plus the members ... The expression ‘Mystical Body of Christ’ signifies a mysterious union with Him, which is the basis of an actual reality. This does not only indicate our moral relationship to Him, owing to the fact that we love Him and call Him brother and friend, but implies an ontological union.

1. If anyone shall deny one true God, Creator and Lord of things visible and invisible; let him be anathema.

2. If anyone shall not be ashamed to affirm that, except matter, nothing exists; let him be anathema.

3. If anyone shall say that the substance and essence of God and of all things is one and the same; let him be anathema. (Vatican Council—on Catholic Faith, Can. I—III).

1. If anyone shall say that the one true God our Creator and Lord cannot be known by the natural light of Reason, through created things; let him be anathema.

2. If anyone shall say that it is impossible or inexpedient that men should be taught by divine revelation concerning God and the worship to be paid to Him; let him be anathema.

3. If anyone shall say that man cannot be raised by divine power to a higher than natural knowledge and perfection, but can and ought by a continuous progress to arrive at length of himself at the possession of all that is true and good; let him be anathema.

4. If anyone shall not receive as sacred and canonical the books of Holy Scripture entire with all their parts, as the Holy Synod of Trent has enumerated them, or shall deny that they have been divinely inspired; let him be anathema.

In venturing to put in front of you, fellow members of the Aquinas Society, one aspect of the teaching of our Master, I do so diffidently; or I would do so diffidently were I not sure that you trill recognise in my attempt merely the effort of a disciple to piece together the deeper teaching of his Master and find in it something which he can use for his own philosophy in life. For this personal reason I have ventured to put together some stray ideas of St. Thomas in order to comfort myself and perhaps, therefore, assist you in the way of life.

We can now see it to have been indeed the very privilege of St. Thomas that he was never anything else than a professor: he is the great patron of teachers, for he was never anything else than a Teacher. You will remember that when on his tray to the Council of Lyons he set out north from Naples, he teas attacked by some sickness which accentuated the strangeness of that last phase of his life which so perplexed Reginald, his secretary and companion. You have only to read carefully Tocco’s text in the Bollandists’ Acta Sanctorum to see many evidences of this strange condition of absent-mindedness in which he especially laboured. After the vision, or whatever it was, that took place on December 6th, the Feast of St. Nicholas, 1273, St. Thomas, to the consternation of Reginald, refused to write or dictate another word of his still unfinished Summa Theologica, and at last, still obdurate in this, moved out north of Naples when the papal summons to the General Council came. All through that journey St. Thomas’s natural absent-mindedness became a dangerous menace to him, intensified by that vision which made him fix his eyes on God. When on the road by Ticino he fell over a fallen tree and seemed stunned by his fall, Reginald hurried forward and talked hard to him so that he should forget what had happened.

Whoever would write about a modern pope labours under serious handicaps. The public utterances of the popes are veiled by a conventional language that most effectually muffles their personality. In the action of the Roman See upon the universal Church during the time they are its bishop, it is not by any means easy to disentangle the part of the pope and the part of the high official whose trained mind is the papal instrument. Convention, again, seals the mouths of those who could speak about the personal reactions of the pope whether to the personalities who cross his path or to the crises of his reign. And once the pope is dead interest shifts rapidly to his successor. In the reign of that successor, in the press of business and of actuality that absorbs the high officials of the Curia from the moment of the new pope’s election, there is little leisure left for the composition of memoirs by those who really knew the pope who has died. The portrait of a pope has thus to be built up from scanty materials indeed, and the most promising of these, from the biographical artist’s point of view, are only too often sadly lacking in authenticity. If Pius XI had been a letter writer as industrious as Queen Victoria, if he had kept a diary, and if there were any chance of these documents seeing the light, then we might, some one might, at some future day, be in a position really to analyse his personality in the best French manner, and set his greatness before the world with the skill of a Gainsborough or a Goya. As it is . . .

To write on worship and family life is nearly as great an undertaking as to outline the world-wide process from its coming out from God in creation to its return to Him in praise and love. For God created the world that He might be worshipped and praised in an unending hymn of love by His creatures, of whom the highest in this world is man. Man is not only the figurehead of creation; he is, with the divine assistance, the continual promoter of this same creation; and it is in the family, above all, that he exercises this noble right to co-operate in the work of God. The family is in a sense the hub of creation, and the very raison d’etre of creation is worship. Even the natural family has an intimate touch of the divine in it, for does not God co-operate by an immediate act of creation in the production of every human soul? The first unmeaning cry of the newly-born child is in reality a cry of praise for the Omnipotent Creator.

We are concerned here especially with Christian marriage and Christian family life in which all the natural aspects of divine worship, voiced consciously or unconsciously by these co-operators in God’s creative act, are raised to a higher order and united by grace to the worship offered by the only-begotten Son of God, made Man that He might harmonize the discordant notes and restore to God a perfect Hosanna and Alleluia.

From the unicellular animalcule reproducing its kind by fission in the muddy pool to the mammal suckling its little ones in the snow, the deserts and the primeval forests, there is found an incredible variety of means and ingenious inventions of living nature for the sure attainment of her universal end—namely, the propagation, provision, and multiplication of offspring. From the simple processes of conjugation in the microscopic filaments of a mould to the complex mechanisms for pollination by insects in the flowering plants one is struck by the fantastic twistings and modifications of the great mother of living beings, organic nature, to safeguard the continuance of these means.

But it is only where all relevant facts have been collected that theories can be built up and principles abstracted from what has been empirically given. Here, perhaps more than in any field, à priori theories and principles are likely to collapse in the exhaustive evaluation of the individual realities of nature.

A man may be convinced of a principle on philosophical grounds. But if he hopes for an oracular ‘confirmation’ from some aspect of twentieth century science he is usually disillusioned. Few things are more treacherous than the surface of physical nature for him who goes unwarily upon it. Principles either emerge from it more or less immediately (e.g. in our considering Quantity as such), or they do not emerge definitely at all. It is usually fruitless and always foolhardy for the student to venture further than the data of research literally allow. A weapon of apologetics welded from a thin collection of facts tends to snap in a generation, perhaps a decade, and frequently as soon as it is used. The misplaced enthusiasm calling it into existence is false and calls down the derision if not of its own age, then most surely of ages that are to come.

Many who would know St. Dominic better, who would enter more deeply into the inward spirit of the Dominican ideal, will turn almost instinctively to historical sources and strive patiently to piece together necessarily fragmentary evidence, to form a portrait of the saint and fashion in the mind a vision of the ideal. Such an approach is normal and fruitful when handled by those competent in the delicate intricacies of history. Still, happily, there are other methods, other approaches to an understanding of St. Dominic; and assuredly in this domain the evidences of history were never meant to be an exclusive norm for our judgements. Why not, for instance, learn from the liturgy, which has much to say on St. Dominic and his purpose? Thus (one point only, among many) the Dominicans’ day of liturgical prayer closes with an antiphon which vividly calls to mind him who, in his time, was a ‘burning and a shining light,’ calls to mind, too, his brethren who have shone in every age because they worked for the Church, preaching not themselves but the Light of the World. ‘Lumen Ecclesiæ, Doctor Veritatis, Predicator Gratia’—‘Light of the Church, Doctor of Truth, Herald of Grace . . .’ There is more than an ordinary ring in such incisive titles, battering mind and will of those who will to listen.

‘Light,’ ‘lightsomeness’ and kindred terms are perhaps worn thin in common parlance. A little thought, a return to Scriptural and Patristic texts soon refurbishes this age-old currency. The Scriptures from Genesis to the Apocalypse, abound in examples of the use of light, even in its mere physical sense, for the vivid intensity of southern and oriental skies play upon the minds and imagery of those who have experienced them, the inspired writers included. Stark contrasts prevail over gentle nuances.

There is this special reason and excuse for undertaking a lengthy expositional review of M. de Rougement’s L’Amour et L'Occident, that if, as seems likely, its historical thesis fails to win general approval the book is bound to suffer neglect. Whereas in fact it has a doctrinal significance that does not depend on the soundness of its history. It is alive with the inspiration of a great theological vision. It succeeds in laying open the real meaning of the conflict between the love of Eros and the love of Agape; and to do that is to display one of the deepest and most vital of all religious issues.

The historical thesis turns on a particular theory concerning the origins of the European cult of Romantic, Passionate Love. It is universally recognized that it descends from the cult of Courtly Love practised by the Troubadours of twelfth century Provence, and that it was through the prestige of their poetry that it captured the imagination of Europe and became thereafter the chief theme of our literature and a dominant force in our civilisation. What is new in this book—new at least in the force of its conviction and the weight of its arguments—is the attempt to show that the Troubadour movement was itself originally an integral part of the heresy of Albigensianism or Catharism. It is maintained that the Courtly Love celebrated by the Troubadours was a symbolic idea invented to represent the unearthly love of Catharist mysticism. The characteristic themes of anguished love, of passion frustrated, of marriage denounced and chastity exalted are interpreted as a secret expression of the Catharist ideal of the flight of a soul from this world and all worldly happiness to achieve union with absolute love.

Man is a complex being, largely due to the fact that he is a microcosm of Creation, comprising within a single unity the essential elements of the vegetable, the animal and the intellectual worlds. This is admittedly platitudinous; but it is also very widely overlooked by so many of those who produce the stream of panaceas for the cure of human ills and the remedying of human evils. Yet the simple truth is that if human nature is to be approached effectively and rightly it must be approached in its completeness and not just from one angle to the exclusion of others. The supreme example of the true approach to man for the furthering of his happiness is to be found in the Incarnation. To reveal the truth of man’s purpose, to provide a meaning to the problems of human life and to open the way to redemption and happiness, God became man and adopted as His own all the complexity of the human microcosm; and His subsequent approach to man was and is through all the channels implied in that complexity. Moreover, the point of primary importance in the Incarnation is that it is the final and perfect moment of Divine Revelation—that Revelation which covers not only the nature of God and His love-longing for man, but also the nature of man and his need for God. Though it is true that Faith without good works cannot save us, it is equally true that good works without; Faith are futile.

An exclusive study of the English fourteenth century mystics might lead one to suppose that the Mass and Divine Office played little part in the genuine spiritual life of the country. It might seem that the individualistic religion of the post-Reformation period was already the vital influence in those, such as Rolle, Hilton and Dame Julian, who sought the Kingdom of God with earnestness. But then we must not forget the great quantity of devotional verse designed for the ordinary Englishmen of the day: ascetical works, mass-books and instructions on the sacraments, on the virtues and vices. The mystical writers presupposed in their readers a thorough acquaintance with the broader and more ‘ecclesiastical’ type of religion inculcated by these works. It is clear from Walter Hilton that a realization of the union of the faithful in the ‘ghostly’ Body of Christ and of the meaning of the Mass and Divine Office were considered as the groundwork of a true spiritual life. It is therefore in that other less mystical literature that we may expect to find a mirror of the common spirituality of our forefathers. One of the most fruitful sources for such a picture lies in that vigorous poem of ecclesiastical reform, ‘The Vision of Piers Plowman,’ which endeavours to recall the sinning English folk to the springs of the spiritual life in the unity of the Church. In this poem we find a truly English and liturgical type of spirituality that must have been characteristic of the devout members of the Church, both ecclesiastical and lay.

When I received your Secretary’s invitation to address the Midland Catholic Medical Society, I was moved to accept by the fact that the very title of your Society showed that you expressly associate medicine and religion, or rather medicine and a particular outlook on religion; and I felt that, if it could be done without impertinence, it might be helpful to trace some of the consequences of such an association.

While you are medical men and women engaged in medicine, but so engaged with a definite theological and religious outlook, I would open my remarks by referring to the converse case of a theologian who approaches his theological work from a standpoint fixed towards science. At the time when your invitation reached me, I had just come across a passage in a Protestant theological work which I had had occasion to consult, in which the writer shows how certain of his convictions in the sphere of modern medical science have patently affected his theology. Discussing Christ’s reference to the possession of individuals by evil spirits, this theologian assumes that Christ was accepting beliefs now outworn, the general beliefs of His time in regard to demon-possession, that ‘in fact, in matters of human science, our Lord’s information did not extend beyond what a man, born and educated as He was, might naturally have acquired.’ The theologian has drawn that conclusion through his acceptance of modern medical views of disease. He is regarding Christ’s interpretation of the origin of particular types of disease as unsound on the assumption that the modern medical interpretation of such disease is sound. Granted that either Christ or modern medicine must be right, the theologian whom I am quoting comes down on the side of modern medicine. Now I assume that Catholics would conclude, on the contrary, that if one of these two must be wrong, then modern medicine must be that one.

Twelve months have now passed since the publication of the Report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Christian Doctrine. The varied comments with which it has been received, both within the Church of England and outside it, have revealed much divergence of opinion as to the significance of its content and in consequence as to its value as an indication of the direction in which the Church of England is moving. Among Catholics, the tendency has been to judge it in the light of its obvious divergences from Catholic standards, particularly in regard to its apparent surrender, as necessary dogmas, of the doctrines of the Virgin Birth and the bodily Resurrection of our Lord, and to write it down as proof positive of the final victory of modernism over orthodoxy in the Church of England. The Memorandum, published this month with the authority of the Council of the Church Union, is an illuminating commentary both upon the Report itself and also upon many of the judgements which have been made upon it. Indeed, it would not be untrue to say that for the outsider a real understanding of the Report is very difficult without its help. A judgement which assesses the Report merely in the light of its divergences from Catholic standards is shown to be superficial; a fruitful judgement must penetrate to the root of the problem and undertake two closely connected tasks The Report must be seen in its setting as the product of the Church of England as it is to-day, and the Church of England as it is to-day must be understood in relation to its past history if an estimate is to be made of the direction whither in the future it may move. The first of these tasks is admirably performed by the Memorandum; to the second, we shall return later.