Is Islam Impregnable?
Belloc, Hilaire
264 THE COMMONWEAL July 2, 1930 But the presence of the Eucharistic Congress in Carthage suggests deeper and more disturbing thoughts. Here are we about to plant the new Christian challenge...
...He is also right as to the legal title of the Orthodox Greek Catholic Church...
...TO the Editor:—In view of the probable advancement in price of commodities entering into the cost of living, provided the tariff bill becomes a law, and this increase being entirely out of proportion to the advance in rates, may I venture the suggestion of establishing in each state a Necessaries of Life Commission, with power to regulate prohibitive or exhorbitant prices, due to manipulation by commission agencies, or interests controlling the purchase and distribution of commodities...
...But in Barbary it was not so...
...COMMUNICATIONS PROPOSAL FOR A COMMISSION Somerville, Mass...
...And here he grows In the dust of night, Like a ghostly rose This saprophyte...
...It began as a great heresy but it has developed into a separate religion...
...It commands a whole world of its own and throughout that world no one of the millions doubts that he possesses something spiritual superior to the hated religion of the West...
...But Islam is vigorously alive and everywhere resists the effect of the Faith absolutely...
...Prohibitive prices in comparison to low wages or a degree of unemployment will further create the inclination toward criminal tendencies which in this age of unsettled conditions is rather to be discouraged...
...In the darkness lost...
...TO the Editor:—In the issue of The Commonweal of May 28, the editor of the Homiletic Review, George W. Gilmore, commenting on the title of the Roman Catholic Church, rightly designates the Church as Roman Catholic...
...Politically it is controlled from Europe, from what has been and may again become Christendom...
...So the term "Roman" is ecumenical and coming from the head of the Church should be official...
...Howard W. Toner...
...ROMAN CATHOLIC" Boston, Mass...
...not to speak of the Church of England...
...There is less discrimination against men because of their religious beliefs in Ireland today than there is in the United States, and on all sides there is a manifest desire to remove the ancient religious hostilities which wrought such incalculable harm in the past...
...The suggestion is not offered in a spirit of controversy, or for the purpose of criticizing legitimate business or an effort to obtain a profit consistent with a fair return on an investment, but rather to prevent speculative tendencies which will react on our element of people who can ill afford to pay speculative prices for the necessaries of life...
...I have always thought that on this problem might turn the fortunes of the Church in the distant future...
...Roberts mentions how the Unionist party in Ireland opposed the establishment of the Free State and goes on to say that "the Unionists were almost entirely Protestant and unhappily the religious issue was always in evidence...
...One may almost say, of doctrinal Protestantism, that it is already dead though its mentality survives...
...But socially it is Mohammedan...
...The seven original Christian Churches of Asia, which antedated the Roman Catholic Church, by many years, was Catholic but not Roman...
...The Free State party is overwhelmingly Catholic in its official membership but one of its most powerful leaders, Ernest Blythe, Minister of Finance, is a Presbyterian, and by birth a northerner...
...It may be called the very core of Mohammedanism, for nowhere did that sudden tide of the seventh and eighth centuries make a cleaner sweep than between the Nile and the Atlantic...
...Nowhere was the original Christian population more thoroughly absorbed...
...From the hands of death They spring, almost With luminous breath...
...In Egypt there are traces of the old Christian state, in Syria and Asia Minor and beyond the Bosphorus the subject Christian held his own, even in conquered Spain he gave his note to the land...
...The efforts made have been heroic and continuous, but these efforts have failed as absolutely today as they did 300 years ago...
...Against that mood we have hitherto effected nothing...
...The historic fact is that Pope Pius IV promulgating the decrees of the Council of Trent, November 13, 1564, solemnly designated his Church as the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church...
...Kenneth Slade Alling...
...When the French landed 100 years ago there was not and had not been for six centuries a trace of Christian culture remaining...
...And with what cost And struggle beneath...
...So let us practise in fact the spirit of the Golden Rule, by affording the necessary protection to our cosmopolitan people, in accordance with our constitution, by establishing a Necessaries of Life Commission to prevent unreasonable advances in living costs...
...I cannot understand why our good Catholic friends should object to their Church being referred to as Roman Catholic...
...The shattering of that belief by the tolerant and statesmanlike conduct of the Free State government has done more to win it the confidence and respect of the former Unionists than any other single fact...
...Though I like the tillage Of fields of men, I'd rather pillage These fields now when As from sepulchres That have burst apart, At the feet of the firs These strange things start...
...John R. Cody...
...One belief which kept their ranks militantly closed was that victory for the Nationalist party would mean the exclusion of Protestants from every post of trust or responsibility and the passage of discriminating and oppressive legislation against them...
...also the Coptic and the ancient Armenian Churches are Catholic...
...Yes, there are many Catholic Churches that are not Roman...
...All was Islam...
...H. Bastion...
...Shall we ever effect anything against it, or will it remain indefinitely in the remote future the standing and invincible opponent of the truth ? Indian Pipes Enriched with shadow, Death has found A spectral meadow In this dim ground...
...Now the disquieting feature about Islam is this: that hitherto it has proved absolutely impermeable to the effect of Catholicism...
...THE KING'S RELIGION Brooklyn, N. Y. TO the Editor:—After reading Denis Gwynn's article on The King's Religion I turned to the New York Herald Tribune of June 8 and read an account of the present status of the Irish Free State by Edward F. Roberts...
...Here are we about to plant the new Christian challenge upon what has been for so many generations Mohammedan land...
...The last of the European heresies is dying...
Vol. 12 • July 1930 • No. 9
