Candles (verse)

...If there appears in England, France, Italy, Spain, or anywhere else, a writer com-petent to express in a fashion appealing to general readers throughout the world, the fundamental doc-trines and ideas of the Catholic Church, well and good...

...and/es Prayer and love and poetry Are three candles burning on the same altar...

...With this suggestion to the publishers and the editor of The Calvert Series, there is nothing left but to recommend most heartily and enthusi-astically the first four books of the series already pub- lished, and to express the hope that American readers will prove that the editor and the publishers were not mistaken when they launched this enterprise...

...for we need today a clear book explaining to everybody what not one man in ten outside our boundaries has grasped--namely, that the apparent novelty of Catholic practice proceeding in true lineage is no argument against its value or its essential foundation in truth...

...Who can know...

...This question can only be settled by American readers...

...HENRY MORTON" ROBINSON...

...Very reasonably they may ask why it is that a series of books entitled The Calvert Series should include to date nothing but English au-thors, and that no intimation has been given that Amer- ican writers and American subjects are to be considered ? The intellectual expression of Catholicism is not a merely national fact...

...As Mr...

...There will have to be, for example, a number of books dealing with questions of property, the guild system, what usury is, and why usury is wrong...

...An American publisher has issued this series of books, which is linked up with other series published by French, German, Austrian and English publishers, but which in a particular fashion, because of the name "Calvert" attached to it, belongs to American readers...

...and we also fail upon it, for we do not make ourselves clear to them...

...If a wind extinguishes one of them, The other two blink and sputter for a while, Then die silently, leaving the heart in darkness...

...There will he a book upon the doctrine of marriage...

...As the author says, the book is an essay rather than an argument .9 Any attempt to present an adequate argument for Catholicism in the space of ioo pages would indeed be an insult to the reader as well as an irreverence to the subject itself...

...Belloc himself, in his essay in The Commonweal, he mentions a few of the more important subjects...

...Belloc proceeds to outline a number of fundamental subjects in connection with the Catholic Church that require this method of clear explanation to those outside the Church whose minds are troubled by apparent but not real difficulties...

...The purpose of this little book is rather to suggest certain lines along which a non-Catholic student might profitably travel in order to gain a general view of the age-long controversial war which has been waged about the Catholic Church...

...Among the subjects suggested by Mr...

...We take it for granted that with the expansion of the series these American subjects and American writers will appear in due proportion...

...g46 THE COMMONWEAL February2, I927 the fallacy so deeply rooted in the modern world out- side the Catholic Church that there exists a natural antagonism between the Catholic system of thought and the conclusions, positive or negative, of the human reason working independently and dealing with prob- lems of the universe in which it finds itself, and coming to its own final judgments irrespective of the authority of the Church...

...A rose puts forth new shoots, but they are the shoots of the rose...

...Belloc says: That last point is most important...

...There will have to be a defense of growth in Church usage, discipline, and form--called in an earlier gen- eration, "development...

...The Catholic Church and Philosophy is dealt with by that trenchant and illuminated Dominican writer, Prior Vincent McNabb, who, with Father Martindale and Father Ronald Knox, is a proof of the fact that a priest who is a real writer can reach and interest the layman's mind even better than a lay writer...

...It is at this point that it seems necessary to say that American readers, if they are to be tested, so far as their interest in Catholic literature is concerned, by their response to this very valuable series of books, are also entitled to an answer to a question which must be in many of their minds...

...And Mr...

...Our con-temporaries fail on this point, I think, more than upon any other...

...It remains to be seen whether or not Mr...

...A second question is connected with this first, which is: Are there a sufficient number of people outside the Catholic faith who are sufficiently interested in these fundamental questions to support such a series of books ? I do not know...

...The main question remains, namely : Are Catholics sufficiently competent, so far as literary expression is concerned, to describe and to elucidate fundamental questions concerning the Catholic faith in a fashion that can be understood and appreciated by non-Catholics...

...If these four books and the fifth, which is now on the press--The Catholic Church and Its Reactions with Science, by Sir Bertram Windle--attract sufficient readers to warrant the continuance of the series, there will be a large number of other subjects dealt with by competent writers...

...Belloc's thesis is sound, and whether there is sufficient public interest in the funda- mental questions suggested by the Catholic Church in its relation to the common weal to justify its continu- ance...

...But it does seem as if the contributions of the Catholic Church in America, particularly in the United States, and the problems which have to do with the develop- ment of faith in the United States, are of such signifi- cance that they should be recognized in a series of books published in the United States...

...A living thing changes perpetually, but changes only within its norm...

...It would be useless to catalogue all the subjects that suggest themselves as being part and parcel of this general program...