THE TABLET y f W eek ly N ew sp a p e r a n d R e v ie w DUM VOBIS GRATULAMUR ANIMOS ETIAM ADDIMUS UT IN INCCEPTIS V E S T R IS CONSTANTER MANEATIS
From the Brief of His Holiness Pins IX to The Tablet, June 4,1870.
Vol. 1 5 9 . No. 4 7 9 1 .
London, M a r c h 5 , 1 9 3 2 .
Sixpence.
Registered at the General P ost Office a * a Niwbpapeb
Page
News and No t e s ................. 293 An Eastward Position . . . 297 Father Skorupka ................. 298 From The Tablet of Ninety
Years A g o ............................ 299 The Malta R e p o r t ................. 299 R eview s :
Right Order ................. 299 "'The Trivial R ound” . . . 300 Language and Nationality 300 New Books and Music . . . 301 Books Received ................. 302
CONTENTS
Lenten P astorals :
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Liverpool ............................303 B ren tw o o d ............................ 304 Hexham and Newcastle . . . 304 Plymouth ............................ 305 School Progress at Newhaven ............................ 305 St. Patrick’s, Manchester... 306 Obituary ............................306 Correspondence :
Rome (Our Own Corre
spondents Weekly Letter from) ............................ 309 Catholic Education Notes . . . 310 W i l l s .......................................311
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Ch e s s ....................................... 311 E t Ca s t e r a ............................ 312 Letters to the Ed it o r :
The Branch Theory . . . 313 Miraculous H o s t s ................. 313 England and the Holy See 314 London Matriculation Re
sults ....................................... 314 School Sports ................. 314 Orb is Terrarum :
England, Scotland and Wales ............................ 315 Ireland ............................ 315 Austria ............................ 316
Or b is Terrarum ( Gontd.) :
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Belgian Congo ................. 316 China ............................ 316 France ............................ 316 Germany ............................ 317 India ............................ 317 Japan ............................ 318 Peru 318 Siam 318 South Africa ................. 320 U.S.A.......................................320 Coming Events ................. 320 Social and Personal . . . 320
NOTANDA Mid-Lent. Some words fo r laggards. A Methodist minister’s plea fo r Lenten recollection (p. 293).
Notes on current politics in the Irish Free State, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Great Britain (pp. 294-296).
The beautiful story o f Johanna Reardon. A letter from the Bishop o f Cambysopolis (p. 294).
A Tariff at last. Suggestions by a Tablet notewriter fo r tire future o f British industry (p. 295).
A new kind o f Gold Rush. A re good trinkets as well as bad going to the melting-pot? (p. 294).
Nazism and Re-armament. A contemporary problem stated but not solved (p. 297).
Cardinal Merry del Val’s anniversary. The observance in Rome (p. 309).
Ignacy Skorupka: his life and death. The story o f an heroic priest o f Poland (p. 298).
A famous Manchester parish. The centenary rejoicings at St. Patrick’s (p. 306).
The Lenten Pastorals. Some further extracts (pp. 303-305).
NEWS AND NOTES T HERE is a Mid-Lent danger fo r Catholics. Just as Shrove Tuesday, under the homely name o f “ Pancake-day,” is observed b y millions of Protestants to whom Ash Wednesday means nothing at all, so Mid Lent is welcomed b y too many Catholics who have done no more than keep— rather unwillingly— the Wednesday abstinence. This little break in the Lenten solemnity is meant fo r those who have trodden the hard road from Ash Wednesday onwards ; not for those who come scurrying up to the half-way house in a char-a-bancs, just in time fo r a day's enjoyment. And, like all other
N ew S e r ie s . Vol. CXXVII. No. 4,190.
genuine half-way houses, it is meant as a place of overhaul and preparation for the second stage o f the journey. I f we do not intend to keep all Passiontide and H oly Week attentively and penitentially, it will be better to regard to-morrow as merely the fourth Sunday in a Lent which hardly concerns us. If w e are not willing to mourn with those who are about to mourn, we have no good title for rejoicing with those who will rejoice to-morrow.
Mid-Lent, however, can be a starting-point as well as a half-way house. There are still three weeks to Easter-day; and twenty days lived earnestly may be more profitable than forty days o f merely fitful piety. Eight days hence will be Passion Sunday, when the veiling o f the images will remind us to “ see no man save Jesus only ” ; and Palm Sunday, only seven days later, will bring in what should indeed be our “ Great Week,” great in sorrow and in love.
” One o f The Tablet’s caustic comments ” is asked for b y a stranger who sends us a cutting from the Methodist Times. It is a letter signed by the Rev. J. Keddie and begins with this paragraph :
No one in touch with present day religious movements can have failed to notice the increased attention that has been given to the observance of Lent during the last few years by Free Church leaders and Nonconformists in general. There is certainly no reason why Free Churchmen, and especially Methodists, should allow the fasts and festivals of the Christian Church to pass unnoticed because Romanists and Sacerdotalists have read into the Christian year meanings that were never intended, and encouraged practices that are wholly without New Testament sanction. We prefer to write thankfully rather than caustically on this extract. That Christians who have hitherto neglected and even spurned the holy season o f Lent should be now respecting and observing it is such good news that we can take. Mr. Keddie's rough words about " Romanists ” good-humouredly. His taunt springs, we think, more from ignorance than from malice. Let him ask himself where he finds clear “ New Testament sanction ” for the penitential
