Communications

...Our devotional llfe, and hence our whole mentality as Cath- olics, is individualistic, and the chief reason for this is to be found in an examination of our prayer-books...

...on high school (public, private, and Catholic) faculties...

...The various "schools" of sociology are only attempts to overemphasize one aspect or another of this whole...

...Of second-rate sources, Mr...

...Le Play's Les Travail- leurs Europ6ens is a monumental work, insufficiently appre- ciated by American sociologists: his formula of "place, work, and family," elaborated by Professor Geddes into "place, work, and folk," is the only one which comprehends all the natural elements that enter into human society...

...Undoubtedly there is something amiss in the present quality of Catholic spirituality...

...MR...

...And it is Catholic, while some of our sectarian character and have pointed to foreign service, medical, and law faculties whose leading lecturers are of many creeds or none...

...Fortunately we have no university such as your correspondent describes with its mission band of professors and lay minutemen ready to drop their professions and lecture in some specialized subject, probably foreign to their training...

...Those who have a friendly feeling for Mr...

...and we have a right to expect to exercise that duty without drawing down professorial ire...

...I would ask some of our educators to be less intemperate~ in their answers and more analytical...

...Mr...

...There is a further and a basic question-Are we turning out understanding Catholics, men and women who know with adamantine firmness, why they believe...

...Every com-munity brings some of its ablest professors to teach its most advanced theological students...

...It might happen, given refractory human material, that the teachers themselves be affected in course of time, insensibly, and with great detriment to all concerned, since they must draw for their own recruits upon this same low grade material...

...Molanphy had merely asked the question as stated by Mr...

...And no remedy for the apathy which you deplore is more worthy of study than is the present liturgical movement in all the Cath- olic parts of Europe (a subject not overlooked at the Catholic Educational Convention...

...just as many a successful professional man, many a successful money maker is an ignorant fellow...

...If the product of our schools is mediocre, it might be useful to study causes...

...The Edinburgh school of sociologists has united the two main traditions of scientific sociology, those of Comte and Le Play, and has applied them in various con-temporary situations...

...If one is to believe such men as Dr...

...The teacher exists for the benefit of the parent and the child, and for no other reason whatever...

...There is an Oxford note in all this, and the traditions of Bacon and Saint Thomas are upheld in the uni- versity by their present brother religious...

...It seems to some observers that there is evidence of the latter...

...Yet, on the other hand, there is an illogical homage paid to the large secular universities and their faculties by many Catholic educators, which amuses one somewhat famil- iar with the assets and liabilities of both systems...

...O the Editor:mPermit me to commend the earnest plea for a deeper sense of Catholic solidarity and communal piety which you have urged in recent issues of The Common- weal...

...F~NClS SVMMERVtLLE McGumE...

...Pritchett and Dr...

...and women through the Social Service School for social work...

...John Henry Newman, by William Barry...

...American education in general is being sub- jected to constructive criticism, but there is a Celtic sensitive- ness to criticism and a lack of self-analysis in most of us which resents the barest mention of obvious weaknesses in our academic system...

...BOOKS ON THE OXFORD MOVEMENT Cleveland, Ohio...

...Sands, and let others answer and discuss it who have a better knowledge of the subject and a keener intellect for reasoning than that dis- played by Mr...

...WILLIAM FRANKLIN SANDS...

...Even today a candid man would agree that it is to the fore among Catholic institutions...

...Figures showing what percentage of graduating Catholic youth embraces professions or even the priesthood are, to my way of thinking, of the utmost nullity of value in determining whether our schools are producing quantity or quality...

...It would seem to one returning from a more vigorous atmosphere after absence of sufficient length to note a change, that in America, Catholics who have the ability and training to express themselves lucidly on public affairs, foreign or domestic, tend to very private thinking, to inarticulateness in such matters as are under dis- cussion, lest they clash with vapid self complacency or hot intolerance...

...Do our educators, who have been so sharp with recent writers on the subject of our schools, claim that there is no higher education than that afforded by our American Catholic M O N W E A L November 4, I925 colleges--none better fitted to turn out perfect Americans and Catholics...

...For work of a research, scholarly nature, which a fair percentage of the faculty and especially the clerical members are engaged in, let me refer your readers to the rector's annual reports, Dr...

...This is quite noticeable when in a series of letters and articles mentioning a number of our schools and some of our universities, there is practically no reference to out single, central, pontifical, national institution, the Catholic University of America, the very capstone of Catholic education in this commonwealth...

...It is not an old nor a numerically large university, and as yet it is not to be compared with Harvard and Yale or some of the European foundations, but its future is bright in the hands of the Holy See, the American hierarchy, and the growing millions of American Catholics...

...It is of infinitesimal importance how a man earns his living, provided he knows how to live and how to judge true values...

...But the official liturgical prayers of the Church, which we do not use, or which we use so privately and mechanically as not to count, are filled through and through with that very spirit for which you are so justly pleading...

...648 T H E C O M FAIR PLAY Washington, D. C. T O the Editor :--A question has been raised which is justly entitled to consideration, and above all, to temperate con- sideration...

...We have a duty to take stock of ourselves, analytically, frequently...

...The archbishop whom you quote as finding fault with "individualism" in Eucharistic de- votion has called attention to a shortcoming that is general...

...Louis, Saint Mary's of Emittsburg, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Boston College...

...The individual- istic character of modern prayer literature cannot fail to impress itself upon our life and to dim our social vision...

...Molanphy whose suggestions are most practical and whose ideas more crystallized than some of his well-intentioned but ill-spirited critics...

...Molanphy...

...for Washington is ideal with its laboratories, libraries, archives, and opportunities for official contacts...

...An outstanding difference between Europe and America (by way of illustration of what I mean) consists in the presence in all the principal countries of Europe of an imposing body of educated lay thought, with which the clergy cofperates, which the hierarchy views with fullest approbation, into which priests and prelates enter heartily...

...religious professors for the Benedictine, Dominican, Augustinian, Marist, and other colleges, including Notre Dame University...

...The university is training secular priests for the various diocesan secular colleges...

...This work, to which even Wilfrid Ward evidently owes a great deal, deserves the high praise you have heaped upon it...

...November 4, x925 THE COMMONWEAL 647 COMMUNICATIONS THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY colleges on the eve of a drive have emphasized their nonWashington, D. C. T O the Editor :--The symposium on Catholic colleges is most interesting, especially the striking communication of Mr...

...Surrounding its campus cluster of substantial buildings and the crypt of the National Shrine are Trinity College for girls, the Sisters' College, and the houses of study of a score of orders and communities from the ancient Benedictines to the Friars of the Atonement...

...We are growing and expanding visibly, by decades...

...To be con-crete--are the graduates of Catholic schools leading or follow-ing the general trend in the society in which they live...

...Molanphy answers the question before he asks it...

...priests for diocesan seminaries...

...Cram's theory of rhythin in history, and who are interested in his prediction of the end of "modernism," will be inclined to ponder the statement of the significance of the liturgical movement made by one of its European contributors--"It is not merely a matter of new ways and means for the winning back to the Church of an age that is being lost to Christian sway...

...Dean Church's work, The Oxford Movement, which you mention, is indispensable to students...

...it tends to strengthen the position of some who are questioning the right basis of education in America...

...REv...

...MOLANPHY'S QUESTION New York, N. Y. T o the Editor :--In your issue of October 2I, Mr...

...The fact that a question concerning Catholic education asked in the columns of The Commonweal has caused annoyance to professional educators, is almost evidence of a wrong relation between teacher and parent...

...Molanphy were merely asking this question~ an eminently proper one to be sure---we could not find fault with him...

...The Christian Brothers are about to build, though they are now represented in the graduate school...

...Persons desirous of getting a first-hand knowledge of the movement will do well to consult Newman's Via Media, his Lectures on Anglican Difficulties, and especially his Letters and Correspondence...

...We cannot plead in excuse that "the Church-is young in America," for the liturgical movetnent is precisely a return to the days when the Church was young everywhere...

...He makes charges against the Catholic colleges which have no rational basis of truth...

...Tbls tendency to follow the crowd may result, quite con-ceivably, from too strenuous inculcation of the negligibility of life and the all-importance of death (in view of the end of man) without balanced consideration of the probability that we were put here to live, to live fully, and rationally and joy- ously, the proper accomplishment of which makes death quite negligible...

...or Victor Bran- ford's Science and Sanctity...

...November 4, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 649 T THE LITURGICAL MOVEMENT St...

...There is also a community and parochial mindedness in many of us which is evidenced, in some of your communications and in the letters and articles in the similar, futile tempest which rages in a sister weekly...

...Besides being readily accessible, the above have the advantage of affording brief, interesting, and reliable accounts of the movement, its beginnings, its progress, theprlncipal characters involved, etc...

...priests for mission work...

...It would have been far better if Mr...

...it is in its deepest meaning a mighty wave of resurgent spiritual life --it is a revolution in world history which those who can read the signs of the times recognize as the approaching end of modernism and the beginning of a new era...

...Readers of The Commonweal may be glad to know that a splendid English translation of this work, by Wilfrid Wilberforce, has been published by E. P. Dutton and Company, under the title The English Catholic Revival in the Nineteenth Century...

...sisters for girls' colleges...

...I maintain that it is perfectly fair and proper to ask men and women of our teaching orders, if they, placed above the tuck, in the light of their life experience, belonging as they do to societies founded for a definite object (in which, for some of them the teaching of a definite order of youth was originally an essential part) are honestly and fully satisfied that the sys- tem of education which has developed here in the past fifty years is not now ripe for far reaching changes...

...We have lost that sense of Christian brotherhood and of the kingdom of God on earth which the liturgy teaches...

...All these books are much closer to the Catholic point of view than most of those cited...

...Now, if Mr...

...Certainly, it is so regarded by my friends on the faculties of secular and state institutions and not solely because of its membership in the Association of American Universities...

...It concerns us all very vitally...

...that we are not yet ripe...

...or Geddes and Branford's The Coming Polity, and Our Social Inheritance...

...The published reports of the liturgical congresses of Vienna and Malines of 1924 are a splendid showing of the strength which the movement has reached in Austria and Germany and Belgium, and are a distinct challenge to the Catholics of the United States...

...There is a Sulpidan Seminary which recalls the pre-Revolutionary traditions of Paris...

...in an occasional secular college including even the American Methodist Uni-versity...

...Writing of the desirability of small colleges (presumably high schools and junior colleges) and the need of lay scholars of Catholic train- ing, he urges that--"The only way to obtain them is to found a university which will, in truth, be a university which will look for its students to the cream of the small colleges, and which will build its faculty in much the same manner, as is already being done, I believe, at Fordham...

...He suggests that the gist of Mr...

...It seems to some that, barring dissipations, it is an absurdity that educated Catholic youth should be in serious danger o losing the Faith in secular colleges, in contact with the so-called "scientific thought" of the day, which is neither scientific nor thought...

...Realizing the difficulty of obtaining students, finances, and faculty, he suggests as a nucleus of his projected university an institution in Connecticut manned by a "flying squardron" of professors from the three Jesuit colleges, Boston, Holy Cross, and Fordham, with gifted laymen of the vicinity for special lecturers...

...RAYMOND J. GRAY, S.J...

...But we have, as every Catholic must know, in the national centre the Catholic University with the Archbishop of Baltimore as chancellor under an episcopal rector and a board of ecclesiastical and lay trustees appointed by the national hierarchy...

...Mattimore's thesis is most astounding...

...Sands goes on--"This is an eminently proper question for any Catholic to ask...

...and I wonder if I might, without presumption, add to the excellent bibliography on sociology you have published there...

...I would cite only: Patrick Geddes's Town Planning in Indore, or his Fundamentals of Sociology in Relation to Economics...

...Continuing he writes---"This, then, would be the embryo university to which as time went on and means became available, would be added the various functions of a university as such...

...Then the university faculty in undergraduate (lay boys) and graduate schools (lay and clerical students) is made up of religious of various communi- ties, of secular priests specially trained, and of Catholic laymen of whom some reflect the scholarship of the best continental and American secular universities...

...William I Franklin Sands comes to the defense of Mr...

...At least twenty-two Catholic colleges (chiefly female) are directly affil- iated and approved by the university in addition to some 285 high schools and academies whose annual examinations are set and read by the university faculty, about sixty thousand papers, in an effort to standardize and improve Catholic secondary education...

...That it is to be a university is a point which must be grasped, for we have nothing in this country which can be called that...

...a fuller and perhaps more objective treatment of the subject is to be found in Thureau-Dangin's volumes, which you appear to regard as existing only in the original French edition...

...T O the Editor :--May I suggest the addition of the fol- lowing titles to the excellent list of books on the Oxford Movement, contained in your issue of October 7 ? The Catho- lic Encyclopedia: The Oxford Movement, by William Barry...

...These books, as well as Mr...

...that the slow process of mass elevation from a low to a somewhat higher level is not yet sufficiently complete to permit of a selective process...

...Paul, Minn...

...In addition to the Apologia--a reprint of the original editions of which (edited by Wilfrid Ward, and containing both Newman's and Kingley's pamphlets--the whole complete in one volume) has appeared from the Oxford University Press...

...I am a little surprised to find absent the works of Fr6d6ric Le Play, the great French sociologist, whose work was carried on in France by Demolins and De Tourville, and in Great Britain by Patrick Geddes, Victor Branford, Alexander Farquharson, and others...

...it is admittedly one of the very best historical studies produced in the last half of the nineteenth century...

...Hibben (whose "credentials," I believe, may be admitted) our American system of education is in a bad way precisely because of mass methods...

...Mattimore and the school of thought which he honestly and frankly represents give the Catholic University of America time, and it will fulfill the highest possible ideals of a Catholic university and stand four square with the world's greatest foundations...

...Molanphy...

...women physicians for foreign hospital work...

...Time, money, and more laymen of high calibre will result in a greater output...

...T BOOKS ON SOCIOLOGY New York, N. Y. O the Editor :--I have just had the opportunity of seeing your issue of October 14...

...The committee which has been formed "to study the causes of Catholic apathy" will not find any cause more deep-seated and far-reaching than this fundamental one which I here suggest, namely--the neglect of the liturgy, the expression of the common mind and heart of the Ecclesia Dei...

...The question is not wholly one of scholarship...

...It is a faculty with free expression, dominated by no race, or section, or order, hut representative of every racial group which is found in the American population...

...To question the state of national education is every American's right, and it is every Catholic's right to question the state of Catholic education in America...

...But the trouble lies in the fact that Mr...

...In this sense he may be truly educated, though unable to read and write...

...Or do they claim that, for some no doubt discoverable reason, the human material with which they have to deal is incapable of assimilating more than is given...

...WILLIAM BUSCH...

...I cannot see that he should need the spe- cial credentials which some of his correspondents seem to de-mand...

...Cambridge History of English Literature, Volume XlI: The Oxford Movement, by Venerable W. H. Hutton...

...that we are training our children, boys and girls alike, not to lead in their environment, but to follow--though with brakes hard set and screeching, an unnecessary and noisy discomfort...

...and some of them were reviewed with great sympathy by Canon Barry in England...

...RICHARD J. PURCELL...

...Deterioration, if it exists, might also be attributable to a climax in some particular method, with consequent need of the next step upward and forward...

...In America, on the contrary, while the hierarchy and a section of the clergy call earnestly for original Catholic lay thought, one hears in private, regretfully, sometimes rather dis- paragingly, admission of its total absence...

...Victor Bran- ford's scholarly Papers for the Present, can be obtained through Le Play House, 65 Belgrave Road, London, S. W. I. LEWIS MUMFORD...

...Richard H. Hutton's Cardinal Newman is cer- tainly one of the most important...

...Whether Catholic parents are or are not generally affected by the tendency to soft flabbiness of intellectual fibre to which so many college presidents refer in public addresses and annual reports, and whether they in turn do or do not affect our schools and our teachers, is a legitimate subject of serious study...

...Its lay graduates are finding places on the faculties of numerous Catholic colleges including Marquette, St...

...This is at least suggestive of the service performed for Catholic education...

...and in research work with the Carnegie Institute...

...Molanphy's remarks is con- tained in the question--"Are Catholic American schools today as good as they should be, giving fullest credit for their achieve- ment in solving particular problems in the past fifty years...

...Guilday's Graduate Studies, The Catholic Historical Review, Educational Review, and Chari-ties Review...

...Let Mr...

...The Editors, while gratified by the interest in Catkolic colleges aroused by C. Molanphy's letter on the subject published in The Commonweal o[ September 23, regret that exigencies o[ space have neither permitted them to publish all the communications that have been written in reply, nor, the case of those published, to print all in their entirety...