Communications
August 28, i929 THE COMMONWEAL 425 last winter by the rabbits and showing only a live shoot or two, is a flock of quail chicks that merely breaks covey and runs cheeping out of your reach. I...
...In spite of themselves, people of the prairies look out on a sameness and flatness...
...No reason for excitement--and less for ill feeling...
...A dozen persons went this way afoot or ahorseback or in rigs from dawn to dusk in summer, and a January snow might lie unbroken for weeks...
...Or you can pick grapes that leave a purple-pink stain, not snipping them off in a dainty way but running a whole branch through your fingers...
...IOINO GIORDANI...
...For his objection, Dom Gray relies on a statement attributed by Eddius to Saint Wilfrid, according to which the Benedictine rule was introduced into England by this saint...
...Also: "Wilfridus, non ex Italia, non ex Gallia . . . accepit [Regulam] sed ex ipsa civitate Cantuaria...
...I should say, however, that Eddius was not so partizan as to deny the most obvious truth...
...I doubt if the general public of this or future generations will manifest that lively interest in the volume which might conceivably lend some importance to our difference of opinion but, anyway, all we can do for the nonce is to leave our separate cases in the hands of those hardy souls who are minded to buy the book and read it...
...COMMUNICATIONS MONTE CASSINO Rome...
...Indeed Wilfrid referred only to a particular place of England, not to all England, as Mabillon shows: "Itaque haec verba 'quam nullus ibi prior invexit' [the same quoted by Dom Gray] sic accipienda sunt, ut nemo ante Wilfridum Regulae Benedictinae usum praximque in Northumbrensia monasteria invexerit...
...Mabillon, for instance, quotes and examines critically more than one document, before reaching those conclusions...
...But the adjective "pastoral," which his reverence attributes to Archbishop Ullathorne, seems to fail, when religious, as well as seculars, are engaged in pastoral work...
...Eddius's Life was unknown to the Bollandists...
...The Commonweal requests its subscribers to communicate any changes of address two weeks in advance, to ensure the receipt of all issues...
...The diocesan clergy are the ordinary ministers of the sacraments and the other secular clergy are special guard regiments or special individual officers to be employed by the Church for special purposes...
...Hardly anyone ever goes down the road east any more, and the mile of it, which before Einstein was the shortest distance from end to end, is seldom measured...
...its space is inconsiderable, but the space-time of it is avoided...
...I know there tends to be about them something scraggly and angular, like the shell-barks and burr-oaks holding on to the clay of the hills...
...But there is less of the monotony that goes with the plain...
...Plant a second iris By the weathered gate, Lest you should surmise my Ver/om, or my hate...
...HAaRY McGvm~, Editor, Outdoor Life...
...That is, Mabillon found exactly the contrary to what has been seen by Dom Gray...
...Scrawl upon your gate-post Ribaldries in chalk...
...There does not exist one shred of documentary or archaeological proof confirming them as authentic history...
...A hill man is disappointed when he goes to live on the plains and finds so great a lack of diversity and color in nature and in the people's lives...
...Near the peak of this last hill, just where you go down, you can reach up from your horse's back and help yourself to plums that, though of a scabby, cholera look and a lumpy meat, can be turned into an excellent jelly...
...W. ESDAILE BYLES...
...Orebaugh s lette m your issue of August I4, this statement: "I have yet to see an instance of a Protestant being permitted to address a Catholic congregation" Leaving out a considerable number of Knights of Columbus gatherings, allow me to say that in response to cordial invitations, I have addressed the congregation in a Catholic Church, in several convents, and in schools--and in all instances I believe I was the only person present who was not a Catholic...
...Presuming I found the author to be a Catholic, should I have called the mystery a ripping fine one, when in my true opinion it was a bore...
...As Miss Browne apparently represents a school of criticism with standards different from those of young Catholic writers like myself, I should like her to clarify her implied position by answering the following questions: Was it incumbent upon me, reviewing a mystery story for a Catholic magazine, to ascertain if the author of the story were a Catholic or no, before forming my opinion of the value of the book...
...it was discovered by Mabillon, who says that he found in this work "the proof confirming the spread of the Benedictine rule in England made by the disciples of Saint Gregory, Augustine and others...
...FRANKNESS IN THE FORUM Huron City, Mich...
...En revanche, twenty-elght Catholics attended the little Methodist church where I preached a few Sundays ago...
...Giordani, in The Commonweal for June x2, tells us: 'Saint Maur introduced monasticism into France...
...In cities, also, life is dull, and the people, pressed like prairie dwellers with nothing new to see, are apt to take to drinking, or hurrying...
...If Dom Gray had cited all the words attributed to Wilfrld, 426 THE COMMONWEAL August 28, I929 he would have found even in them a proof confirming what he calls "tradition...
...To a magazine like The Commonweal, held in the highest of respect by discriminating Catholics and non-Catholics alike, such a principle would be suicide...
...I, 650) "scripsit saepe panegyr/stae in modum vitam S. Wilfridi...
...From his monastery on the Caelian he [Saint Gregory] sent Augustine, who with forty companions set foot on English soil in 596' 'And from this time Saint Benedict seems to have taken possession of England as his own.' Dom Gray ought to write: "Cardinal Gasquet tells us," because I was summing up his last book on Saint Benedict...
...Miss Browne has raised a standard of critical appreciation of lay fiction which I thought had long since been discountenanced except in the narrowest and most stupid sheets...
...O the Editor:--I note in your issue of August 7 the letter from Edythe Helen Browne, in which she takes issue with my review of Elizabeth Jordan's The Devil and the Deep Sea, which appeared in The Commonweal...
...His own suggestion of "diocesan" fails also, because it does not cover the case of such secular clergy as the beneficiaries of collegiate churches, as Oratorians, as Paulists or members of other congregations of seculars, nor, of course, of individual priests not attached to a diocese...
...That sentence was, "Is this the way to boost Catholic writers...
...and if he found the rule there, obviously the rule existed in England before him...
...then he went to Kent, whence he returned with the rule of Saint Benedict...
...Who testifies to that...
...Among others, Eddius himself9 "Huius rei luculentum habemus testem Eddium...
...Now Kent is in England...
...All these points lald down by Gasquet are for Dom Gray "nothing more than traditions...
...Or, possibly, should The Commonweal--if it accepted the mission "to boost Catholic writers," even when they write books having no conceivable connection with Catholicism--investigate the religion of authors before turning their books over to reviewers, and give instructions to their reviewers to "boost" books by Catholics, regardless of what the reviewers think of the books...
...Whatever they are to be called, they remain the same...
...We took physical shape and, I think, mental turns from looking seldom on a level but up and down their slopes, and if we became a little earthy they became very human...
...The real question might be this: Does there exist one shred of documentary or archaeological proof against these traditions ? A different criterion could easily lead one to deny--as has happened-----even the historical existence of Jesus, or of Saint Peter, or of Saint Clement Roman, or of Saint Benedict, etc., etc...
...commendaverant...
...August 28, i929 THE COMMONWEAL 425 last winter by the rabbits and showing only a live shoot or two, is a flock of quail chicks that merely breaks covey and runs cheeping out of your reach...
...L~o KENNEDY...
...possessing, to judge from her letter, a variety of qualities which should raise the book to the peaks of the best-sellers...
...At least this seems to be the interpretation given to his words by Dora Gray...
...The seven or eight miles around are regarded by practical people as much shorter...
...This road was never trafllcky...
...THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA Denver, Colo...
...WILLIAM LYON PIIELPS...
...Saint Placid . . . was sent to Messing...
...Indeed he relates that Saint Wilfrid from Sussex went back "ad sedem coenobialem" (i.e., to a monastery...
...The title of Father Moran's letter reasserts the eternal doctrine of the Church that the common father has need of secular clergy as welt as of religious, and has made just as ample provision for them "in saecula saeculorum...
...I killed a snake yesterday, a leathery livid bull, on this second hill, east side, going down, at the spot where that post is broken off in Big Man's fence...
...Possibly a better adjective than "secular" may be found...
...IN SAECULA SAECULORUM New York, N. Y. O the Editor :--The title (In Saecula Saeculorum) of Father Moran's letter in The Commonweal of August 14, should suffice to take the imagined "sting" out of the adjective usually employed to designate priests (and laymen) not bound by the vows of religion...
...From Kent, relates Eddius, Saint Wilfrid brought also masons and cantors, among them Eddius himself...
...It was our road, the hills were ours, intimately made into our lives...
...We were taken up and down them, as a child is taken to church, before we knew hill from plain...
...But . . . if you came again Some cool afternoon, I would break the silence Of that dusty room...
...If that were so, the very principles of religion and history would be broken...
...I frankly and sincerely thought the story a dud, and said so...
...As to the judgment about Reyner, I do not see why Dom Gray took the pains to cite it, since I have never referred to the works of this author...
...To discuss more deeply the implications of the objection made by Dora Gray would mean to discuss the origin of the monasticism in the western world: which cannot be done here and with the ocean between us...
...That is: Wilfrid took the rule not from abroad, but from England, yet from Canterbury, and more exactly from the monastery founded by Saint Augustine...
...We trundled along over their feet, rested a moment leaning on their sides, and saw the world from their brows...
...So, even Eddius gives a "shred of documentary proof...
...But hundreds of historians, among them Mabillon, Hergenr6ther, U. Berli~re, Gasquet, give these statements as a history, not as a tradition...
...Litt...
...Eddius, however, is not so reliable as Dom Gray believes...
...quam quidem Regulam Gregorii discipuli Augustine and his companions nequidquam ibidem...
...But tradition does not mean legend, nor imply opposition to, or defect of, truth...
...I would twist an iris From its narrow stalk...
...Yet "it is not probable," as Wells goes on, "that Wilfrid became there first acquainted with the Benedictine rule, as Eddi's local pride makes him assert...
...But if you heard someone coming down the next hill you began to pull out and to figure how you could make room to pass...
...Their horizon is an unbroken piece, almost a conventional thing...
...other controversy, I observe m Mr...
...O the Editor:--Dom Bede Gray, in his letter of July xo, x929, writes: "Mr...
...Does Miss Browne, who, I believe, has herself appeared as a contributor in The Commonweal, continue to hold that Catholic writers should "boost" any book by a Catholic, however bad--as in the case in point-they think the book...
...The hill people for me...
...That Eddi's Life"--as B. W. Wells confirms (English Historical Review, I89I, VI, 535)--"is the work of a partizan appears even from a cursory reading and is generally recognized...
...Heddius, Bedae carus," as Hurter says (Nom...
...f x en And if you went away Leaving me behind, I would seal a certain Corner of my mind...
...Miss Browne thinks the book a regular whopdoodle, and she certainly has a right to her opinion...
...We were baptized in clay, and as we grew up they were there, always the same, before our opening minds...
...Indeed, I should not trouble to reply to Miss Browne were it not for the last sentence of her letter, which summed up her chagrin and, like a bolt out of a serene sky, left me incredulous, amazed...
...One may read, in his preface to the monumental Acta Sanctoram, O.S.B.,T.I., the fifth and eighth chapters: "De S. Mauri missione in Gallias," and "Augustinum sociosque monachos non tantum Fidei Christianae, sed etiam rei Benedectinae esse auctores...
...A mystery novel which was to me not only "tepid" but tiresome and quite inconsequential--impressions which I tried not to convey too heartlessly in my review--was to Miss Browne the acme of perfection...
...t-~ O the Editor :--Without wishing to enter into this or any 9 ' r " .li...
...Our wide disagreement as to the merits of the tale would seem to resolve itself into a question of taste...
...I would find the greatest pleasure in going for a walk today down the road east...
Vol. 10 • August 1929 • No. 17
