It is a dangerous thing to describe the present in terms of the past. The pontificate of Pius XI is not yet history; nor are we sufficiently removed from certain great political events in which the Holy See has been involved in the last fifteen years, to judge them without passion and with due proportion. Mr. Teeling has made an ambitious attempt to describe and to account for the apparent trend of Vatican diplomacy, which, especially since the beginning of the Abyssinian war, has been the object of so much unflattering attention in this country. In so doing he has sought to place this prickly subject in its proper setting by describing the manifold moral, political and social problems with which the Catholic Church is confronted in every part of the world. It is a cross between history and guess-work; but it is not without value to non-Catholic readers for whom the book seems to be mainly intended. On balance it may be that it will do more good than harm in those circles where ignorance of the immensity and complexity of the Church's task is as monumental as is, on the other hand, that Catholic prejudice which the author has so rashly challenged.

The end of all becoming is being, but not, ultimately, of that which becomes considered by itself: of that which becomes considered as participation in another mode of being which is the mode of being of something which already and really is.

Change means that that which changes is not to be considered by itself.

The end (result) of the body’s constant mutations is the successive participation in the potentiality of matter. But this is not the end (finality) of the body’s mutations. The end (finality) of becoming can be nothing imperfect.

I think this means that the end of all becoming is the participation of all creatures in the risen humanity of Christ.

Being is essentially communicable. You don’t have to explain why being communicates itself, as if it were something being as such were not expected to do. Perfection, what we would call by transliteration the formality of being as such and of actuality, is communicable per se, imperfection communicable per accidens. Imperfection to be communicated implies a pre-established communication in potential being. Communication of imperfection is the abandonment on the part of those who communicate in it of specific and diverse actuality for the sake of that communication in what is potential and common. The communication of perfection is the communication of the diverse as diverse in a unity intrinsically proportioned to its participants. We can understand nothing here without the metaphysical principle of analogy.

The history of philosophy is certainly not the uniform and regular development of a primal seed; there are breaks, irregularities, off-shoots. Yet it is true that we cannot legitimately reduce it to a mere welter of mutually exclusive ideas, to a mere swarm of watertight systems. We shall look in vain for complete breaks. The past cannot but reach over into the present and in some sense perpetuate itself. Period shades off into period gradually and the pressure of what has gone before leaves an indelible mark on the present. Thus all would agree now that we cannot admit a decisive and unbridgeable gulf between the scholasticism of the close of the Middle Ages and the philosophy that succeeded. It is true that the age of Descartes is an age of revolt throughout a great part of Europe, but this very fact precludes the possibility of a complete new beginning, since that age of which the philosopher may be said to be a spokesman by its very contrast and opposition to the preaching age is largely determined and coloured by the past.

The story of the gallant attempt of the later Middle Ages to win Asia for the Church is so often passed over with the scantiest reference, even by Catholic historians, that it is almost unknown. It covered more than a century; a century whose short opening years of high hopes were followed by long dreary ones of disappointment, persecution and martyrdom, to end in the destruction of all achievement and the expulsion of the missionaries.

The first great missionary movement, which converted the northern barbarians, was the work of the Benedictines, while the glories of the sixteenth century in the East belong to the Society of Jesus. The great missionaries of the later Middle Ages were the Franciscans and Dominicans. Both Orders bore the brunt of the battle equally throughout Asia, but Cathay and Central Asia was particularly the sphere of the Minorites, while India, Persia and the Caspian Steppes was that of the Preachers.

Perhaps the most deceptive aspect of this new unrest among the European people is the superficial newness of it. Men are not prepared to recognize the age-old undefeated forces of good and evil, God and the devil, in the new complexity of twentieth century life. They will not realize that the new paganism is saying to-day what intellectual fools have said in all the ages, and that the new Christianity is stealing its very essence from the old, the true, the everlasting Church of Christ. And perhaps the most alarming aspect of it is the subtle encroachment of this sophisticated blindness upon the Catholic field of vision. Now, more than ever before, the need for Catholic Action and the opportunities for its promotion are evident on every hand. The bulwarks of the Faith need strengthening with the strength that comes only from unity of thought and purpose, staunch co-operation between the laity and clergy, and unstinted perseverance in the propagation of God’s revealed Word. Without that strength to stem the flood of anti-Christian feeling which is especially directed against the Catholic Church, there is small prospect of preventing the decline and fall of what was once the whole of Christendom.

“There is to-day an immense amount of nonsense talked about both Bolshevism and Fascism. It is not really necessary, in order to condemn Fascism, to become an apologist for the Russians; nor is it required that those who hate Bolshevism, as every intelligent Christian must, should cry out that Fascism is our only salvation therefrom . . . It is foolish to deny the enemy’s strength, or to blink at one’s own weakness.—Bernard Iddings Bell, A Catholic Looks at his World.”

With this text Mr. Attwater begins his enquiry into Why Communism Gets Away with It, why it is vital that Communism should not get away with it, and the only way to prevent it. As the text might suggest, his bird’s-eye-view of the general situation is balanced and common-sense. He shows that the purely economic proposals of Communism are “eminently calculated to appeal to men suffering under poverty, distress and injustice,” and further that this part of the Communist programme is not by itself morally objectionable. But he goes on to point out that Communism is not only an economic policy; it is also a quasi-philosophy, taught and held with the fervour of a religion. “And that philosophy is false; it is dialectical and materialist, whereas the truth is metaphysical and spiritualist.” It is not easy to convince the working-man of the terrible importance of this statement. Mr. Attwater endeavours, not without a real measure of success, to reduce the issue to concrete terms.

Those who find a congenial atmosphere in movements to preserve our countryside, to alleviate the lot of the working-class or to make marriage easier, will meet in Mr. Gill's writings a different level of criticism. He belongs to the small class of critics who have penetrated the merely symptomatic maladjustments of industrialism to conduct an arduous enquiry into the nature of its revolutionary achievements. He is the critic of the Leisure State. It is customary to refer to the Leisure State as the end towards which we are tending. But industrialism began four centuries ago and in that time has succeeded to such an extent in its revolutionary programme that it is reasonable to maintain that we are already living in a society which, if it has any positive form at all, is a Leisure State. That it is also a Servile State, that its leisure is more commonly unemployment or a highly lucrative opportunity for those in the entertainment trade, is explained away both by capitalists and communists; the former pleading for time to realise a more dignified Leisure State, the latter demanding the power to clean up rapidly the messy beginnings of others.