THE TABLET j ä W eek ly N ew sp a p e r a n d R e v ie w
DUM VOBIS GRATULAMUR ANIMOS ETIAM ADDIMU5 UT IN INCCEPTIS V E S TR IS CONSTANTER MANEATIS
From the Brief of His Holiness Pius IX to The Tablet, June 4,1870.
Vol. 156. No. 4,729. L o n d o n , D e c e m b e r 2 7 , 1 9 3 0 .
S i x p e n c e .
R eg is tered at the General P ost Of f ic e as a New s pape r
Page
New s and Notes ...................8 57 “ Over the Top ” 861 Ourselves ............................ 862 Books Received ................. 863 R e v ie w s :
Mgr. Wilpert’s Work in the Catacom b s ................. 864 S e a - f a r in g ............................ 864 The Moral Law ................. 865 A Russian Pilgrim . . . 865 Don Bosco 865 New Books and Music . . . 866 The Counter - Reformation 866
CONTENTS
After Filippino Lippi A dvent P a s t o r a l s :
B ren tw o o d .............. Northampton Lancaster .............. Salford .............. Plymouth .............. Correspondence :
Page . . . 867 ... 868 ... 868 . . . 869 . . . 870 . . . 870
Rome (Our Own Corre
spondent’s Weekly Letter from) ............................ 873 Ob it u ary .............................. 874 E t Ce t e r a ...............................8 75
L e tters to the Ed it o r :
The Hurricane at
Dominica
Page
876
Education Bills ................. 876 Russian Softwoods . . . 876 “ The Tablet ” 876 Catholics in Regimental
Bands ............................ 876 From The Tablet of Eighty
Years A g o ............................ 876 The Late Monsignor Barry 877 Montserrat’s Loss ................. 878 Catholic Education Notes 879 Coming E ve n t s ...................8 80
Or b is T errarum :
Page
England, Scotland and Wales .............. . . . 880 Ireland .............. ...881 Argentina .............. ...~ S81 Canada .............. . . . 881 Central America . . . . . . 881 France .............. . . . 881 Germany .............. . . . 882 Italy .............. . . . 882 Portugal .............. . . . 883 Spain .............. . . . 883 So c ia l and P ersonal . . . 883
NOTANDA
Timber from Slave-camps. A practical suggestion fo r immediate action (p. 861).
Spain. The Tablet resumes its documented and reasoned protest against Hispanophobe publicists. Mr. Toynbee’s thin and tendencious “ Talk ” (p. 859).'
“ Quite modern ” testimonies against the Catholic Church. “ A London Layman’s ” appeal to an outof-print book, a defunct publishing house, and a French work o f unstated date (p. 858).
“ Wanted, a Good Sporting Parson, Screw £300 per annum.” A compliment to the “ AngloCatholics ” in H orse and Hound (p. 858).
What The Tablet is and does. An invitation to its friends (p. 862).
Some Anglican statistics. More clergymen and fewer communicants (p. 859).
Monsignor William Barry. The funeral sermon at O x fo rd (p. 877).
A picture fo r the season, from a painting by Filippino Lippi (p. 867).
NEWS AND NOTES
r I AHE last day of December, and the first day of
•*- January are not treated in the Sacred Liturgy as New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. They are observed as St. Sylvester’s Day and the Feast of Our Lord’s Circumcision respectively. Y et the Proper of St.- Sylvester’s Mass anticipates the “ Watch-night ” Services which have been becoming more and more popular among our Protestant brethren from John Wesley’s days onward. The Gospel describes a Watch-night. Our loins are to be girt and our lamps burning : because, “ in such an hour as we think not the Son o f Man will com e .” The Master pronounced a Beatitude upon faithful watchers : “ Blessed are those servants whom the
Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching.” Not one man of us can be sure whether 1931 may not be the year when the Summons will be to his own very self.
Only by straining could we make the Proper for next Thursday seem to yield particular phrases appropriate to the civic and secular festival of New Year’s Day. But the Mass on that morning will have a deeper fitness. The newness of life to which individuals and societies are encouraged by homilists can be realised only on the basis of the Incarnation ; and the Mass of the Circumcision, like all the Masses from Christmas Eve to Twelfth Night, insists upon the historical truth of the Word made Flesh. Although there are only two dozen words in next Thursday’s Gospel, they bring out the fact which matters most for everybody who wishes (as Thursday’s Epistle will remind us) to “ deny worldly desires and live soberly and justly and godly in this world ” ; namely the fact that “ unto us a Child is born,” whose name of Jesus, or Saviour, was not of Mary’s or Joseph’s choice but was part of the Angelic Message, priusquam in utero conciperetur. The methodizing of our lives as from a January the First may be a help towards moral progress ; and so can the keeping o f a new diary and the making of ad hoc resolutions. But the grand remedy and nourishment of ailing men and nations is simply the believed and lived Religion of God Incarnate. The Catholic who stops jotting entries in his diary by February, and breaks some of his best resolves by March, may still make a good 1931 ; but if he lets go his faith in God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, conceived of the Holy Ghost, b om of the Virgin Mary, circumcized the eighth day, crucified, dead, and buried, risen from the tomb and ascended into heaven, then may Almighty God help him.
A Senate can work well provided the Senators be not senile. But the trouble with Elder Statesmen, as the Japanese call them, is that many o f them are much more elderly than statesmanlike. The French politicians who take counsel together (or
N ew S eries. V o i . C X X I V . N o . 4,128.
