At first sight it may seem strange to call some orders ‘active’ and others not. In one sense the contemplative orders are the most active of all: a Cistercian monk who rises at two in the morning, and spends many hours in prayer but as many in hard manual work, could scarcely be called idle. But in die technical sense those orders called ‘active’ are deliberately concerned with the works of active charity—whether spiritual (as in missionary work) or temporal (as in the care of the sick or in educating children). They, like all religious orders from the very beginning, are concerned with the following of the counsels of the Gospels in an organized life according to rule, but the monastic features of stability and a liturgical structure, as well as the characteristic organization of the frairs, are sacrificed in order that dieir particular active work can be more effectively pursued.

Strictly speaking these orders are not orders at all, since they do not take the solemn vows that are the mark of the monks and the friars. But this is a technicality of the canon law which scarcely concerns our present purpose in describing their work. For the active orders first came into being, as did the monks and the friars in their time, to meet a need of the Church and were constituted to meet that need. The Reformation was an immense challenge to the Church, and it was soon evident that new methods were needed to win back people lost to Catholic allegiance and to stimulate the spiritual life of the faithful. It was the Jesuits most of all who were to be the instrument of the reform within the Church that was to be the answer to the Reformation which had caused so great a breach in Christian unity.

The Newman Demographic Survey in Wales started, unlike that in England, with a direct poll of the people of a Catholic parish. It had been hoped to parallel the work done in England on the records of parishes, dioceses, and certain public services. But it turned out that Catholics can be traced, when the public service records in question are kept in the form usual in South Wales, only by digging so far into the files as to violate professional secrecy. And there are many small parishes, above all in Menevia, where the danger that even the most discreet digger into ecclesiastical records may stir up gossip is greater than in,, say, Westminster. So a direct poll it had to be, and last winter a pilot poll was duly taken in the parish of Aberystwyth. Aberystwyth was chosen because it was isolated and with a small Catholic population; a manageable first sample, and with the advantage of containing a University College with an active and enthusiastic Catholic Society. The Bishop of Menevia gave his consent, and the survey was duly carried out by the Catholic students, led by Dr E. T. Nevin, Lecturer in Economics in the University, and with aid and comfort from the Very Rev. Fr Maguire, o.carm., Chaplain to the University Catholic Society. The survey forms were drafted at Cardiff in collaboration with Dr Nevin, and were duplicated at Cardiff. They were given out after Mass on Sunday, January 23rd, 1955, accompanied by a letter from Fr Maguire, at each of the Mass centres in the parish. Parishioners were asked to return them the following Sunday. In addition, other known Catholics were contacted at home. This was simple enough in Aberystwyth itself and the other small towns. In the open country, in the weather of February 1955, it was often a case of Dr Nevin leading his merry men (and girls) in a Good King Wenceslaus act up the snows of Plynlimmon. ‘You see that corner?’ said one farmer as the enumerators’ car turned for home. ‘I’ll be interested to see if you get round it.

Five years ago the position of architecture in this country changed radically. The Festival of Britain, the South Bank Exhibition in particular, marked the final victory of the ‘Modem Movement’ within the architectural profession; a change which seemed both popular and officially acceptable.

The Festival Exhibition did not contain any one building which could be called great architecture; there was little, by European standards, that was even very good. But the glamour and the freshness of the various pavilions, the spaciousness and excellent acoustics of the Festival Hall had good publicity value. And the free, ambling layout of the South Bank reminded visitors of those pleasures of town life which we, in this country, had lost and almost entirely forgotten.

The change was radical; but it was not sudden. During the war social conditions had altered a great deal, and after 1945 much of this adjustment became statute, so that building, which for long had been a private perquisite, turned into public business. Hence the abandonment of many quasi-traditional prejudices and increased discussion of architecture at a rational level. It was no longer: ‘I’m paying for it, I’ll have what I like and I know what I like’ but ‘We all have to pay for it, so we had better agree on what is best’. Hence, too, the increased prestige of the architect as a technocrat and—this last with much coyness on the part of some architects—as an artist.

As a result of all that, architecture is the art most in the public eye at the moment and the Arts Council have at long last recognized this state of affairs by organizing a photographic exhibition of Ten Years (1945-1955) of British Architecture. There is also another innovation: this is the first properly designed Arts Council exhibition.

It is now upwards of forty years since the Montessori Method came into being. It has in fact existed long enough to have a history; and from a brief study of that history we may glean some important truths about it.

In the first place it can be safely affirmed that the Montessori Method is not just one of those educational fads that come suddenly into prominence, and then as quickly die out. In spite of the double catastrophe of two world wars, and all the confusion and insecurity consequent upon them, the Montessori Movement is stronger today and more widely spread than ever before. In this present year Montessori Training Centres exist in Great Britain, Ireland, Holland, France, Denmark, Italy, Germany and India; and others will be opened up as soon as trained personnel is forthcoming to carry them on.

It is not, however, merely a question of geographical extension. More important still is the question of depth. During all these years—a whole generation and more—the Montessori System has never ceased to develop, probing ever deeper into the mysterious roots of the child’s developing personality, and culminating, during the past ten years, in Montessori’s Doctrine of the ‘Absorbent Mind’.

The triumph of Christ for St Paul was most clearly shown in the resurrection. Being dead, he was buried and the third day rose again. The risen Christ was seen and St Paul lists the occasions (i Cor. 15). The resurrection is the supreme point of the triumph of God’s grace in the world, for it demonstrates that the flesh is redeemed. This does not merely mean that the corporeal, the quantitative element in man, is redeemed. It means a conquest of all that is alien from God in man’s hfe.

It is, of course, true that body, the whole sphere of sensation and imagination, becomes through Christ an instrument of salvation. Each sacrament is an occasion of the redemption of the whole man, and in each sacrament the physical and sensory is the sign of God’s action. Body is, therefore, not something inimical to the action of grace; far from being a poison or the instrument of corruption, it is of its nature made for God. The flesh as alien to God means something more complex. It is the whole man closed to God, feeding on his own resources. Man as independent of God and hence the victim of his illusions. Man the idol maker, cut off from the Creator, yet still creative. The symbol of his creation is no longer marriage: union with the ground of existence, hfe in the garden of controlled fertility: the symbol is adultery, the burning of the child, the jumping and slashing before the altars of Baal—creation and fertility run riot, become malignant because of sin.

This is overthrown by Christ: body is no longer evil flesh, but the carrier of resurrection. Because the Son condescends, subjects his body to the powers of evil, he redeems flesh. In the flesh the victory is won by the Word made flesh.

Let us forget ‘religious sociology’, a misleading mistranslation from the French, which to an English audience confuses two quite different things. The ‘Christian’ or ‘Catholic’ sociologist studies, like the sociologists of any other denomination, how behaviour—not particularly religious behaviour, but behaviour in general—is affected by the social structure. His method is factual and scientific, like that of the non-Christian. But he uses insights from the theology of social order and the Christian conception of the natural law as a guide in picking problems to investigate, and to help decide what should be done about them once the facts are revealed. ‘Religious sociology’, on the other hand, as it has come to be understood on the Continent—the right English translation is the ‘sociology of religion’—is a much narrower field, and one not specifically Christian. It studies how the practice of religion, that is religious as apart from general behaviour, is influenced by the social structure. As Fr Virton, s.J., puts it in a question quoted in this report:

We, writes St Paul, are chosen in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspoiled in his sight in charity (Ephesians 1, 4). It is only in so far as man is chosen in Christ and one with Christ, that he belongs to God. Christ, raised from the dead, rules and is made ‘head over all the Church’ (Ephesians 1, 22). The Church is the body of Christ (Ephesians 1, 23); and to this body all those who at one time were afar off are joined, or in St Paul’s phrase ‘are made nigh’ (Ephesians 2, 13). All men are born under the condemnation of Adam and are therefore afar off from God, but ‘in the blood of Christ’ they are made near to God. Made near because Christ ‘is our peace’ (Ephesians 2, 23). It is Christ who ‘has made both one’ and who breaks down ‘the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh... that he might make the two in himself into one new man, making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body by the cross, killing the enmities in his flesh’ (Ephesians 2, 14-16).

The cross of Christ, which is the presence in the world of God’s judgment and love, is creative of that peace or unity that overcomes all division and enmity. The divisions that arise from sin or pride, all conflict as between flesh and spirit, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, are transcended in Christ. The death of Christ created a new unity, that of those who are called apart to live in charity in the presence of God. No escape from the world, but a transformation of all that goes to make up the world. This holiness of life is the basic category of life—the only purpose of existence. By it not merely the middle wall of partition between men is destroyed but the division between man and God, opened by sin, is closed. ‘You are no more strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and domestics of God’ (Ephesians 2, 14).

On September 23, the annual Peace Prize awarded by the German Book Trade will be presented to Reinhold Schneider at St Paul’s Church in Frankfort on the Main. This prize was founded in 1949/50, and has been given every year to an author of any nationality or religion who by his life and work has contributed to the future peace of the world. Albert Schweitzer and Martin Buber, Hermann Hesse and Carl J. Burckhardt were previous prizewinners. Anyone who knows Reinhold Schneider’s life and work would agree that he deserves the award as fully as his predecessors.

On May 13 of this year Schneider kept his fifty-third birthday; it is also the birthday of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, one of his favourite historical characters. He was born in Baden- Baden of a Protestant father from the Erzgebirge, and of a Catholic mother from the shores of Lake Constance, he himself being baptized in the Catholic Church.

According to a short sketch in his book Erbe im Feuer (‘Heritage in the Fire’), his childhood was a happy one, although rarely can parents in the twentieth century have shown so little understanding of their son’s vocation and gifts as Reinhold Schneider’s father and mother. Schneider senior was an extremely taciturn man: father and son rarely spoke to one another. When he died rather young of an incurable disease, the author’s mother married a Catholic physician in Baden-Baden with whom Schneider’s relations, although good, have again not been based on any profound understanding on the elder man’s part.

Father Huddlestone has become a great centre of controversy, and it is most important to sort matters out carefully when considering his book. It describes his experiences, particularly in the ‘black spots’ of Johannesburg, and gives views in judgment on South Africa and race relations in South Africa.

Most of the book is in the form of incidents showing the effect of discriminating laws on the African. As regards narrative matter, it is factual; although selected, it is not exaggerated. What he says of the African’s hardships under the Pass Laws, the housing shortage and permit restrictions, the summary methods of the police and partial justice in magistrates’ courts, is all a matter of daily experience in South Africa. What he says of the tsotsis, gangsters who terrify the locations, is particularly good. In a system that stifles ambition, and provides no outlet for the animus of young men, they turn sour on society. Their crime list makes terrible reading, and seeing, if you are near it. But it is a social symptom rather than a moral matter. I have even known one who might be a sort of martyr for principle. He made one promise to his mother, never to use a knife. An argument at cards —and he was stabbed and killed outright, and curiously enough on the feast of his patron saint. Had he had a knife and practised with it he might be alive today. The descriptions of the broken careers and mental struggles of the more educated, their despair and frustration, are true. Father Huddlestone has put his finger on the chief problem for a priest: ‘God forgive me. I find myself giving advice that in those circumstances I could not follow ... it needs heroic virtue.’

We still know less about Walter Hilton than about any other of the great medieval English mystics, yet what we know is enough to show us that in his own age and during the fifteenth century he was more highly esteemed by students and practitioners of the spiritual life than perhaps any devotional writer of the times. Richard Rolle’s sensational works had earned for themselves the immense popularity which they deserved, but there were many who came to deplore this popularity, and it is evident that the influence of Hilton was regarded as both a salutary corrective to Rolle’s extremes, and as in itself beneficial. In the present century this development of later medieval thought has been again obscured, partly, though quite involuntarily, because of the new impetus to the study of Rolle given by Miss Hope Emily Allen, in her immensely scholarly if labyrinthine Writing Ascribed to Richard Rolle, and in her admirable little edition, English Writings of Richard Rolle. In this second work, published in 1931, she presented one solution to the problem which confronts everyone who wishes to edit a text which achieved a large circulation in the Middle Ages. Had she attempted a complete collation of all the surviving manuscripts (no less than ninety-three separate texts of the various English writings which she edited were known to her), she might well have been still engaged in the task. Instead, she took for each treatise or poem two or three of what she considered to be the best manuscripts; and so for the last twenty-four years we have been able to read good, early versions of Rolle’s own words largely free from the welter of footnotes with which most of those who are engaged in such scholarly pursuits still encumber their works.

There is a sarcastic German saying of which I am often reminded when reading certain German books: ‘Why do it simply, if it is also possible to make it complicated?’ Dr Urs von Balthasar, the distinguished thinker, who has unfortunately already complicated the simplest of saints, St Teresa of Lisieux, now does the same for another modern Carmelite, Elizabeth of the Trinity; and his friend, Adrienne von Speyr, even succeeds in giving us a book of highly involved and not a little pretentious meditations on our Lady. There is no doubt that we are in need of thoroughly theological and unsentimental treatment of ‘devotional’ subjects, and both these books supply this. But they are unhappily vitiated by this deadly tendency to read non-existent profundities into the most normal events and attitudes, and to bandy about concepts of Kierkegaardian ‘dread’ and existentialist ‘vertigo’ where they have no meaning whatever.

Dr Balthasar’s book has been ‘translated and adapted’, and this means presumably that some of his more recondite observations have been cut out, which is all to the good. But unfortunately the translator, A. V. Littledale, has kept far too close to the author’s highly idiosyncratic style and frequently reproduces even his word order and his substantival adjectives and verbs, an inadmissible procedure that makes the reading of the book unnecessarily exhausting. To give but a few examples of this ‘translation-English’: ‘The man of faith lives from the standpoint of his eternal election by God.’ (p. 27). ‘Faith ... is the making present to the mind of our origin and end . . .’ (p. 28). ‘Her perception that the execution of the Father’s eternal plan is the work of the Holy Spirit, is the angle from which Elizabeth came to view the whole of revelation; her perspective directs itself primarily to the Spirit.’ (p. 107.)

The climax of the affair of the worker-priests in France came on January 19, 1954, when the Bishops sent to each of their worker-priests a circular letter communicating to them the decisions of the Hierarchy. The crucial sentences were the following: ‘You must, on receipt of this letter, and at the latest before March 1, withdraw from your present firm. . . . We ask you ... to resign from all temporal responsibilities to which the trust of your comrades may have called you. By the same token, you will be good enough, as from now, not to renew your membership of the trade union you belong to. . . . The sacrifice we ask of you will, in all truth, prove to be a spiritual liberation. It will at the same time be a source of graces for the labouring masses on whose behalf you offer it. We dare not even consider what would happen if you were to refuse to submit.’ In the event slightly less than half of the ninety priests so addressed did refuse to submit. At the end of February a meeting was held between the ‘submitted’ and the ‘unsubmitted’ and it was agreed to continue with these gatherings for purposes of information. At the first meeting after March 1 it was agreed to publish a book on the work that had been done and a commission was appointed to draw up a plan. When the plan was presented at the following meeting the forty-seven priests who had accepted the Bishops’ decision withdrew their support from the project. Nevertheless the others continued and the book was published in November of the same year. A translation of this has now been published in English.

It is not presented as ‘a book of history, of doctrine, of polemics, of propaganda or of edification’, but as ‘a collection of documents which furnish reliable information and checked material’.