Many of the problems of modern religious the may be traced back to the over-emphasis of one or other of the two elements already discussed in a previous article: the individualistic asceticism of the solitary, and the collective the of the liturgical servants of God. It is therefore possible that the solution of these problems may be sought in the realisation of a balanced monastic life paying more conscious attention to the two main sources of its natural existence. First, then, the modern difficulties springing from the individuaHstic and ascetical element in religious life. These are multiple, but they may usefully be classed as they refer to three main topics: Penance, Contemplation, and Perfection.

In the first place the penitential side of monastic observance has thrived too much upon the neoplatonic suspicion of the body, so that today the rules regarding the giving up of the good things of life have taken on a positive, objective character.

The fact that two great Carmelite saints should both have been called Teresa has inevitably led to a constant comparison between ‘the great’ and ‘the little’ saint, according to the various points of view of the critics. Miss Sackville-West compared them, in her study published eight years ago, as eagle and dove, with a strong bias in favour of the ‘eagle'. We naturally feel uneasy about such a valuation since they are both canonised saints and are therefore both great in the eyes of the Church. But perhaps there is some justification for such a comparison of value even for the Catholic who fully acknowledges the heroic greatness of both in the order of supernatural virtue.

The appearance at this time of several studies of the one and of the other St Teresa, together with the translated Letters of ‘Avila’ herself, gives us the occasion to weigh Miss Sackville-West's title once again.

David was a man after God's own heart. The saying is founded on certain qualities in the psalmist, prophet, king, conqueror, which mark him out as distinct from all the other saints and heroes of either Testament. Among these qualities was this: that he was, if not an ‘ordinary’ man, a norm among men. He was extraordinary only by not being in the striking mode of most holy men, extraordinary. He worked no miracle like Moses, suffered no crushing humiliation like Job, saw no vision like Isaias, had not to hope against hope like Abranam. He was, to ordinary men, an ordinary man, and his greatness lies therein. He had strong human desires and enjoyments, but did not permit anything human to interfere with his service to his God; and that he sometimes lapsed, and once lapsed gravely, adds to his normality and even, in the long run, to his sanctity. He was intensely alive and intensely human in his desires, his ambitions, and his affections, yet free from base self-love and the sophistication which corrupts the purity of a man's character.

Making a very valuable and attractive addition to the rapidly growing series called La Sainte Bible the Canticle of Canticles has now appeared, translated and introduced and provided with brief notes by Père A. Robert, Professor of the Institut Catholique of Paris. It makes also a suitably delightful little book for the reading of such lovely poetry; and it is a pleasant and skilful translation. But with all its magic beauty everyone knows how difficult a book this is to interpret—'without parallel in the history of biblical exegesis’ is how the difficulty of it appears to Père Robert. Yet after reviewing some of the principal theories of interpretation he chooses and yops his own with a masterful assurance.

In order to see the modern needs of religious men and women in perspective we should sometimes look across the Christian monastic scene back to the natural origins of religious life in primitive and pre-Christian religions. These origins, although they do not include the supernatural vitality of a life dedicated to the following of Christ, have yet a fundamental bearing on the way religious behave throughout the ages. Grace builds on nature, and there are natural origins even for religious life, which thus has a specifically human character as well as a divine. After many hundreds of years’ progress in ways of life and of culture, there almost inevitably arises a threat of dislocation, when those living the traditional culture are severed from its roots. In the case of Monastic life (just as on a wider field of the whole Christian way of living), the many centuries of existence have led to a tremendous elaboration which can become in part artificial and with little natural support.

My dear—To begin with the ending: at about three o'clock the sentence was read out: Moltke, death and deprivation of estate; Father Delp, the Jesuit, the same; Reisert and Speer, ditto; Fugger, three years’ penal servitude. The defence had their say, all of them really quite decent, nobody malicious. When it came to the last words of the accused, your husband was the only one to waive his right. The best of the sofound verdict is: that we ‘had no design of using violence’ is now established: established, that we made no slightest move towards organising, spoke with no single person about his or her taking on a post. All we did was to think, and not all of us did that, just Father Delp, S.J., Gerstenmaier and I, the others counting as passengers. And the thinking of these three men, their mere thoughts, are so disturbing to the National Socialists, that anything so contaminated must be wiped out.

In the preceding passage, John had been questioned and had given testimony to Christ. Now he gives further testimony spontaneously, giving the testimony first and then confirming what he had said before, in the words: ‘And John gave testimony saying … ‘ The circumstances of his giving testimony are described in the first place, followed by his exact words: ‘Behold the Lamb of God'; his witness is excluded from suspicion by the words: ‘And I knew him not'.

Details of the circumstances are given firstly as to time, where it says, ‘The next day', and here the perseverance of St John is especially commended, because he went on giving testimony to our Lord, not upon one day alone, nor even once only, but upon several days and at different times: ‘Every day will I bless thee'. (Ps. 144.) His increase in fervour is also commended, for we ought not to allow each succeeding day to pass without variation; it ought to be different from the preceding, which means better, as the Psalmist says: ‘They shall go from virtue to virtue.’

The re-publication of Miss Waterhouse's symposium of prose and poetry, a ‘little bundle of thoughts’ as she herself calls it, takes for granted the relationship between literature and life. When this book was first published in 1902 it was still fairly widely agreed that literature and any form of art did touch human life and should be expected to touch human life at many points. Although Walter Pater and many like him had lived and written, the ‘Art for Art's Sake’ creed had not borne its full fruit. Now almost fifty years later this same book sees the light again in a world that thinks very differently. Today it is commonly taken for granted that poetry exists primarily in its own right and may only be judged on its own terms. It was indeed very necessary after the excess of ‘moral’ literary criticism to re-establish the natural rights of poetry.

Is it the mission of Christianity only to save the souls of those whom we can persuade to come to church, or is it equally part of our mission to Christianise society? Father Michonneau and his collaborators in the parish of St Colombes in Paris have long been convinced that too exclusive a concentration on the first of these tasks is responsible for the relative failure of the Church among the industrial masses of the continent. In his parish, a few years ago, not more than five per cent of the total population could be regarded as practising Catholics. His book is an impassioned plea, fully supported by the late Cardinal suhard and blessed by Archbishop Cushrng of Boston, for the adoption of more realistic methods in dealing with such a situation. To begin with, they were convinced they had no right to spend all their time attending to the needs of the five per cent who were faithful, and forgetting the ninety-five per cent who were growing up with little knowledge of Christ and no knowledge of the Church.

The Holy Year, which, through no merit of Ours but by the mercy of God, has been productive of greater benefits than it was humanly possible to foretell, has, in a wonderful series of public manifestations, given evidence of the great faith and fullness of life in the Church of Christ, our Mother. Among these important events your congress, your brotherly meeting, appearing among them as a shining light, now comes to take its place; it gives Us pleasure to welcome you with words of affection.

Church history shows no parallel of a meeting like the one which has recently taken place whereat its members, chosen from among those who are resolved on the goal of evangelical perfection, met in this notable congress to discuss their common interests and take counsel together.

The Eastern Church has never ceased to share in that wonder expressed by St John in his First Epistle concerning the Word of Life, ‘Which we have heard, seen with our own eyes, contemplated, touched with our hands'. That man should handle the Divinity—that the Divinity should stoop and empty itself to the utter annihilation of the Cross, that a meeting between death and life, heaven and hell, creature and Creator should have been made possible within the limits of our human space and time—that the divine energies should have reached and penetrated human frailty—that all this is not a thing of the past but an ever-present reality—the only true reality of this transitory life—such is the intimate conviction expressed in all the liturgical texts of the Byzantine rite and lived by the faithful.

There is only one centre of life: the ceaselessly unfolding, ever present drama of the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which culminates in the revelation of the Blessed Trinity at Pentecost and the birth of the Church—that new creation within which the deification of man, or in other words his union with God, is made possible.

1. (a) The magnificent conception of the unity of the Church, of the faithful as constituting one body in Christ so closely knit together as to make isolated or solitary prayer out of the question. This is not a new nor original idea, but it is finely expressed here— St Cyprian was martyred in A.D. 258. (cf. No. viii.)

2. (b) Following on this, the strong emphasis on concord and peace. So emphatic indeed is St Cyprian as to be led into the strange assertion that not even martyrdom can wipe out the sin of schism, (n. xxiv.)

3. (c) Clear teaching on the value—the necessity even—of daily Holy Communion, (n. xviii.)

4. (d) The interesting eulogy on Abel as the first martyr, thereby initiating the Passion of Christ, (n. xxiv.)

5. (e) On the acknowledgement of sin as the prelude to the sense of it. This again is not new; St John (i: I: 9) says the same thing, but it is often overlooked, (n. xxii.)

This is a new edition of a little book first published in 1881; but it is so much larger than the original production and contains so much added matter, that it must rank as almost a new work on the subject. In the first part the author gives a short history of St Bruno and his foundation of the Carthusian way of life and of the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse, from its foundation by the Saint up to the expulsion of the community and its return, after an absence of thirty-seven years (1903 to 1940). Part II describes the life lived at the Grande Chartreuse with a full account of the monastery itself, its buildings, etc., while Part III sets before us the ideal of Carthusian life in its marvellous combination of the solitary and cenobitical forms of monastic life, designed to avoid the possible disadvantages and dangers of each.

When the great Moses undertook to initiate the Israelites into the Divine mysteries which had been inaugurated on Mount Sinai, he did not consider them ready to receive the theophany until he had ordained the purification of the people by chastity and the sprinkling of water. But even so they did not brave the manifestation of the Divine Power, but were struck down by all the apparitions, the fire and the darkness, the smoke and the trumpets. So they turned back and asked the Lawgiver to be their mediator of the will of God, seeing that they were not fit by their own power to draw near to God to receive the Divine manifestation. But when our Lawgiver the Lord Jesus Christ is bringing us to Divine grace, he does not show us Mount Sinai covered with darkness and smoking with fire, nor does he strike fear into us by the meaningless sound of trumpets.

Now that We have sketched the history of the institution of nuns and carefully described how it can be reconciled with the needs of life today, We think this is the place to give the general norms according to which that reconciliation is to be applied. The Sacred Congregation for Religious will put into effect the entire Constitution and the General Statutes for all Federations of monasteries already existing or still to be set up and for single monasteries. By Our Authority it will be able to achieve by instructions, declarations, replies and other similar documents all that has to do with realising the Constitution carefully and effectively and the prompt and faithful observance of the General Statutes.