The Christian sacrament is at once cause and sign. Each sacrament is a cause which signifies the kind of grace it produces and a sign which causes what it signifies. In the sacrament we have a perfect coincidence of sign and instrument, for in performing the signifying action we are also constructing an instrument used by God to confer grace. Now it is obvious that the causing of grace is something much more mysterious and much more important than its signification, and in the face of a Protestant criticism which denied all efficiency to the sacraments and saw them simply as symbols or memorials of Christ's life, it is not suprising that Catholic apologetics should have emphasized this causal character of the sacraments. The Christian sacrament is a genuine cause of grace, operating not only dispositively or ‘morally’, but directly causing what it signifies.

The whole man must be the holy man, the deprivations of evil made good, the darkness of sin enlightened, the faculties and powers of mind and body integrated and controlled by the will, the whole fired by the flame of charity. This is God's will for each of us, the work which never ceases and at which we must hammer day by day. Everyone concerned with the religious education of children must have these considerations in mind. But who are they? All too often the phrase is taken in tthe narrow sense of the school teacher, or the priest who teaches the catechism class. ‘They’ will prepare him for his first Confession, his first Holy Communion, and in due time for Confirmation. The responsibility is ‘theirs’. There are signs that this attitude is beginning to change, but do we as teachers relize sufficiently the delicate balance between the contributions of home, church and school?

When at length Job's comforters had done their reasonable best to justify God's ways with man according to their own theological preconceptions, the Lord answered him out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Let a scholastic psychologist bear in mind that closure to the debate when he sets out to outline how we should use our faculties in our life with God.

Using is what we do with utilities, and these as such are expendable objects which though not valuable in themselves do serve a higher purpose. Hence it is not the same as cherishing, which is what we do with things dear in themselves or as enjoying, which is what we do with things that give us pleasure.

The title of this article seems to imply a dichotomy. First, let me affirm that man, as a living being, and still more as a spiritual being, is a unity, a whole, that cannot be split into two parts.

This may seem obvious when it is question of a normal, balanced, adult man; one who does not need psychotherapy, but only pastoral guidance. On the other hand, when we are talking of a neurotic, we make use of numerous expressions, or ways of speaking which introduce a dichotomy, not in the way in which the neurotic is approached, but in the subject himself. For instance, we make a distinction in his psychology between a healthy part and a part which is diseased. We say that the therapist must ally himself with the healthy part in order to fight, with the sufferer, against the diseased part.

The most recent Papal documents dealing with the problem of Christian unity are very careful to remind us of what the Catholic doctrine on the subject of the Church and its unity is. The fear is expressed in them, in several places, lest an anxiety to promote Christian unity, commendable doubtless but not sufficiently clear-sighted, should lead in the mind of some to a certain playing down of the essential teaching of the Church in this matter. we have in mind some expressions now current that these documents quite evidently avoid for fear that their use might lead to a dangerous confusion in the minds of their reader. It will be useful, therefore, with a view to securing complete fidelity to the full meaning of these documents, to examine here one of these expressions, order to settle accurately, with exact theological terminology, in what sense and context it may be used, and when, on the contrary, it should not.

It is impossible to maintain a neutral attitude towards the priest; by his very calling, he must either attract or repel. In society, he may serve as a scapegoat, like the Jew, or he may become the beloved shepherd of his flock; he may heap confidences upon himself as easily as insults; he may even arouse feelings of guilt, though no sooner is the word out than the presence of psychiatrists is felt. Today their influence, though not emphatic, is everywhere pervasive. Indeed, if the eighteenth century was called an Age of Reason, so perhaps might the present century be called an Age of Psychology; a definition far nearer the mark than any newspaper headlines about an Atomic Era. For in the end, mind always proves to be superior to matter, just ‘all argument proves to be ultimately theological'.

In a time as overshadowed as our own by the angst of the day and its despair, there has recently been published, among many inspiring Catholic works, one which in a sense is unique, antidote, it might be termed a counterblast, to anguish. A paris journal announces its sale up-to-date of sixty thousand copies.

By the late Auguste Valensin, S.J., famous abroad if scarcely known to the general public in this country, by no means the least of the facets of its unique quality is the fact that the book consists of the personal meditations, without ‘points’ or formalities of any kind, written day by day, by someone of obvious holiness and culture, published since his death in 1953.

To those of us nurtured in any degree on the too-usual style of much of earlier French spiritual writing, this may be far from an alluring introduction.

The Fourth Gospel has variously been called the ‘Gospel of Grace', ‘of Love', ‘of the Divinity of Christ',and all these may be applied to it with equal aptness. Perhaps the most striking title is that of'Grace'. It is the Gospel of hope in our future glory and of our present bliss. We are presented in it with a a divinely optimistic view of life because it brings the message of God's infinite and eternal love for mankind. One cannot read it, seems and not deepen one's love of God. All this arises from its central theme, which is Restoration. It brings to sinful man new hope of sallvation.

So much for the psalm's title. Now let us listen to the actual words of him who is affecting and drumming at the city gate. ‘I shall bless the Lord at all times, his praise shall be always in my mouth.’ Christ says it, let the Christian say it too, because the Christian is part of Christ's body. When will you bless the Lord? When he makes things easy for you? When you enjoy worldly wealth, and plenty of corn, oil, wine, gold, silver, slaves, cattle, and the best of health besides; when your crops and herds flourish, and nothing dies or dwindles out of time, when your house is filled to overflowing with prosperity, is that when you are going to bless the Lord? No, no, but at all times.

The poetry of Paul Verlaine is a challenge to the conventional reader of religious literature. It is neither decreed nor supposed that every author of meditations or guides of the spiritual life be a saint, either in glory or, by reputation, in the flesh, but it is disconcerting if he is, publicly and, so to say, extravagantly, a sinner. It can hardly affect the reputation of verlaine to say now, fifty years after his death, that he is best remembered as a poet who sinned. Such a reputation alone might have effectively excluded him from the catalogue of religious writers. Verlaine enjoyed, however, the distinction of having published, in what appeared subsequently as little more than an interruption in his wayward career, poetic witness to a state of conversion and intimate conversation with God. He failed to win much sympathy from contemporary French Catholics, and it is difficult now to accord his religious poetry the esteem which, on its own exclusively, it deserves.

It might have been called ‘Hy Brazil the Isle of the Blessed’, for a blessed isle it unquestionably is. There is a reverence in the air here that is almost palpable. It has been generated by the prayers and sufferings of the pilgrims that have trod its rocky surface for fifteen hundred years. But the resemblance to Hy Brazil must end there. Hy Brazil was a mythical place, Lough Derg is a reality. It is one of the oldest places of pilgrimage in Christendom, and secure in that knowledge it reposes quietly and unobtrusively in the brown lake amongst the little bare hills. It has no need to advertise itself, for it is famous throughout the Christian world. To this hallowed spot year after year and century after century the faithful have flocked barefooted and penitent to lift up their hearts in prayer to God.

There does not seem to be anything very obscure in the text of this psalm; but its title puts us on our mettle, it cries out for us to knock on its door. However, ‘blessed is the man who hopes in him’ (Psalm 33. 9), as it says here; so let us all be hoping he will open up to us when we knock. After all, he wouldn't urge us to knock if he didn't want to open up to us when we do. If it sometimes happens that a man who was intending to keep the door shut for the night will get up and open it against his own inclinations, because he cannot stand the din of the door-knocker any longer (Luke 11. 8); surely we have every reason to hope that he who said ‘Knock and the door will be opened to you’ (Matt. 7. 7), will open it promptly.

It is essential to have a clear idea of the numerical strength of the various religious denominations in France, if we are to assess correctly the present effort towards Christian unity in that country. The great majority of the population is Catholic, at teast in name; Protestants, Calvinist and Lutheran (leaving sects like Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists out of account) number about 750,000; the Greek and Russian Orthodox come to a few thousand.

Thus the religious bodies adhering to the World Council of Churches represent a tiny minority in France. This explains why their problems, whatever their intrinsic interest, remain in the background. The movement for Christian unity in France hinges primarily on the relationship between Protestants and Catholics.

The eyes of the Lord are upon the just'; no need to be afraid then of your difficulties; the Lord's eyes are on you. ‘And his ears are open to their prayers.’ What more could you want? If the complaints of a slave in a large household didn't reach the head of the family, he would have something further still to complain about, and say: ‘What we have to put up with here, and nobody takes any notice of us!’ you cannot say about God, can you, ‘The things I endure and no one takes any notice'?—Well, if he did take any notice of me, perhaps you will say, he would remove my troubles for me. I clamour and I am in trouble. —Youjust keep to his ways, and when you are in trouble, he notice it.

He sent away this Jewish people and went off. Look for Christ nowadays among the Jews, and you won't find him. What did he send them away for? Because he changed his features. You see, they would stick to the sacrifice after the fashion of Aaron, so they missed the sacrifice after the fashion of Melchisedech. They lost Christ, and the gentiles began to possess him, although he had not sent them any warning in advance. He had sent the Jews plenty of warning, through David himself, through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, through Isaias, Jeremias and the other prophets, and a few of them did recognize him as a result—few, that is, compared to the number that failed to and were lost.