Head and Heart in Common Catholic Prayer

Extract

I Think good Catholics want the common Christian life of prayer as much as ever. They know that Christians should love one another, and live and pray as a body, but they do not know how to set about it. Other Christians would want it, and thereby become better Christians, if they saw before them an example of the Christian common life of prayer.

From one point of view the big difficulty seems to be that our Christianity is heart without head; from another it seems to be head without heart.

It is heart without head in so far as in this twentieth century of Christianity, hundreds of Catholics seem to be insufficiently instructed in what it means. It is head without heart in so far as Christianity has become for many people a mere matter of creed and catechism without sufficient of the practical common action which bring creed and catechism to life. Religion is worship, common religion and common worship; and it can never be a mere creed.