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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2025
Within the last year two, at least, valuable books have appeared on the spiritual life— Abbot Butler’s Benedictine Monachism and Mr. Watkin’s Philosophy of Mysticism. The first of these has been so much noticed that I need not stay over it, save to remark on its sweet reasonableness on the question of mortification and austerities. Herein the Abbot contrasts with Mr. Watkin, who explains and defends with enthusiasm the path of utter detachment up Carmel. This difference, at first sight merely one of emphasis, does, I think, depend ultimately on divergent philosophies, and therefore raises several problems. Does, for instance, a philosophy of mysticism or sanctity require one definite way to God, and is that way necessarily one of ruthless austerity and detachment?
That this question is worth asking is proved by the fact that nowadays there is a desire to portray saints as gracious and lovable persons—not after the manner of the Oratorian lives, which even in the fifties were ill received—but as intensely human and aided to love of their fellowmen by a passionate love of God. A good example is the life of Soeur Thérèse. On the other hand, no amount of explanation can disguise the severity of a St. Gerard Majella, a Père Ginhac or a Father Doyle. The life of the fatter is especially interesting because his biographer quite clearly loves the human element in Father Doyle, but is too sincere to hide the extremes which his asceticism adopted, extremes which might have come straight out of the pages of Surius and are somewhat at variance with the ideal cherished by Abbot Butler.
* BLACKFRIAS, July, 1920.