When our Lord said ‘Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after justice', he did not mean, presumably, those who are out to get justice, agitators demanding justice for the workers, or men determined to defend the sacred rights of property. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst, not after the rights of justice, but after the virtue of justice, who are eager to do, not to receive justice. These are the ones who shall be filled.

This virtue of justice, being just, is not only a matter for judges or persons in authority. It is the very first virtue required of every Christian. And it is also very last virtue, the one that will be looked for by your judge at the end. On whether you are truly just or not will depend whether you go to heaven or to hell. Hell for the unjust, heaven for the just; the just to the right and the wicked to the left, and these shall go into everlasting punishment, but the just into life everlasting.

Before the first world war, there was in Germany no talk of refusing to serve in war. True, we heard that in England and America there were a few sects that refused war services or military service even during peace time. But they were considered strange people; mentally and morally not quite sound!

During the four years of the first world war, we became more thoughtful. Afterwards there was an upsurge of the anti-war movement, but it was suppressed by the Nazis. The second world war, stretching over five years, was so horrible that probably the majority of all Germans came to appreciate the point ot Conscientious Objection. Indeed, an interior objection, a protest of the moral sense, gripped them. But exteriorly they did not dare to come forward. In fact, their political and military though, the legacy of centuries, held that there were moral objections against open resistance to directives issued by legitimate authority.

As a result, the Germans as a whole not only did not refuse their services in the war unleashed by Hitler, but most of them, even most of the Christians, expressed serious religious doubts, whenever this or that individual consistently and bravely answered ‘no’ to his draft call.

The book Franz Reinisch, ein Martyrer unserer Zeit, by Heinrich Kreutzberg, published recently in Germany, contains a remarkable tale. It depicts vividly and impressively the life and suffering of the Pallottine priest Franz Reinisch, who was condemned to death on July 7th, 1942, and executed in Brandenburg on August 21st, 1942, at the age of thirty-nine. Called up for army service, he had firmly refused, for reasons of conscience, to take the oath of allegiance to Hitler. He knew, of course, that many others in the same situation thought and acted differently. That gave him reason for reflection. But with all consideration and prayer, he remained ever more confirmed in the decision to make a visible protest against the unjust government then in power and its ‘leader’ by refusing to take the military oath. He was unwilling to swear fidelity. Moreover, as a native Austrian, he viewed Hitler as a usurper in that country, and denied all duty of obedience to him.

The true apostle must be a poet, and an apostle who is not a poet is no true apostle.

In order to understand this claim, we may start by describing the would-be apostle who is no apostle. A Christian sets out to be an apostle for Christ. He joins a Catholic Action group or enters an Order such as that of the Dominicans who specialize in preaching. He begins to prepare himself for the work by reaching down from the shelves of the library large tomes of Christian doctrine and theology. He learns all that the Church commonly teaches; he delves into St Thomas's deep and precise explanations. Better still, he may con the gospels to discover what Christ himself taught. He will study, too, maybe in a course of apologetics, all the reasons against the faith that are likely to be brought up against him in his missionary activity, and he will discover, not merely ‘the answers’ as though every problem he met could be answered by his own wit, but, sensibly, he will discover the lines along which such attacks can be met and parried.

Many Catholics feel increasingly disturbed in their faith nowadays by the anthropological approach to religion. Anthropologists currently look upon religion as just one of the aspects of 'culture', as a psychological objectivation of man's subjective emotions, imaginations and explanations of reality. Gods, spirits, myths are therefore just as man-made, as are human institutions, customs, morals, say they.

May I suggest that in this, as in all other cases of disbelief and misbelief, it is quite wrong on our part (and not only tactically inexpedient) to throw the offered opinion into the waste-paper basket as totally unacceptable. We used to do so with Paganism and have only of late come to sec that Pagan beliefs are partial truths that need straightening out and being put in the proper perspective—truths which, when thus treated, enrich our own understanding by an emphasis on facts that often have hitherto escaped us.

When therefore we are told that man makes his god, I would accept this statement as quite true, as far as it goes, but add that unfortunately it does not go far enough. Does every puddle in the road make its own sun? Yes and no—poetically yes, scientifically no.