n^be American
Ecclesiastical IRcview
A MONTHLY PUBLICATION FOR THE CLERGY

Cum Approbationc Superiorum

VOL. CXXVI
JANUARY -JUNE, 1952

Έρ tvi πνεϋματι, μια ψυχρ
συναθλουντ^ς τβ πί(ΓΤ€ΐ του evayyeXÎov
Phil. 1:27

Published by

,

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS

REFORM AND INTEGRALISM
One of the most interesting and widely discussed books in re­
cent years is Fr. Congar’s Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’église.
On the first page of his avertissement the distinguished author tells
us that the present bulky (648 page) volume is only one (actually
the fourth in his own logical ordering) of the eight essays he has
projected to accompany his forthcoming basic treatise on the
Church, L’église, peuple de Dieu et Corps du Christ.
Primarily the declared purpose of the present book is not to put
forth a program of reforms which some individuals believe called
for in the contemporary Church, but rather to study and fix the
place of reforms, considered as a fact, in the life of the Church.
The author sets out to show certain conditions which eventually
render a reform necessary and those which make such a process
possible without bringing harm to the Catholic communion itself.
Actually, however, the book has been written with a definite “re­
forming” movement in mind : the movement which has brought
forth, among other things, the body of teaching commonly known
today as the “new theology.” Fr. Congar is aware of manifesta­
tions of this movement in other European countries, notably Ger­
many, Austria, and Italy. He is most concerned with its expression
in France, and the third and last of the appendices which close
this book, a chapter entitled “Mentalité ‘de droite’ et intégrisme en
France,” sums up the spirit and the conclusions of the entire
volume and applies them to the present situation in his own coun­
try. The book was written and had received its imprimatur some
months before the appearance of the Humani generis. Before the
printing operation was completed, the encyclical had been pub­
lished, and some of the addenda appended to the book refer to it.
Fr. Congar’s introduction to his book opens with the observation
that self-reform has always been an activity of the Church (p. 19),
an observation which, incidentally, is somewhat dimmed by the
author’s subsequent criticism of the principle “Ecclesia semper re­
formanda” (p. 461 ff.). He continues his introduction by pointing
out the existence of self-critical and “reforming” movements within
the Church today, particularly in France. He believes that such
movements were less restricted in medieval times than during the
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127

modern era, and he indicates factors which have rendered such
processes more or less suspect since the time of the Reformation.
In the introduction Fr. Congar also indicates what he considers
to be four characteristics of this contemporary criticism of the
Church from within. It is described as frank and even brutal (p.
39), as having a serious basis and structure (pp. 40 f.), as giving
a great part to the laity (p. 42), and as involving a return to
sources (p. 43). Incidentally, an addendum on p. 623 calls atten­
tion to the warning, voiced by the Humani generis, against any re­
turn to the sources conceived in a spirit of neglecting or despising
the normative teaching of the Church’s living magisterium. The
author declares that, despite the fact that he employs the term
“sources” in a broader sense than that which is found in the ency­
clical, his own manner of dealing with a return to the sources
(ressowcement) is in harmony with the teaching of the pontifical
document.
As causes of the contemporary movement, Fr. Congar indicates
a modern taste for sincerity, which militates against meaningless
gestures and statements. This movement has been occasioned by
the upheaval consequent upon the recent war, and specifically, it
has been brought into being by reason of a realistic view of the
Church’s situation in the modern world. Its point of application
is to be found in the desire for true and meaningful expression and
in the necessity to adapt or to revise some forms of the actual life
of the Church.
The body of the book is made up of three parts. The first answers
the question : “Why, and in what sense, does the Church reform
itself?” It is composed of three chapters. The first deals with “The
Church, its holiness and our failures.” This section opens with a
distinction between the old and the new points of view with regard
to the problem of evil in the Church. According to Fr. Congar,
ancient tentatives toward reform were invariably directed against
sin, or against a sinful situation. In recent times, however, those
who have set out to act as reformers within the Church have been
faced, not only with the fact of sin, but with the necessity of com­
batting whatever appears to be insincere, and whatever is back­
ward or narrow with reference to the movement of history.
This first chapter goes on to list some of the scriptural, patristic,
and more recent Catholic statements with reference to reform

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within the people of God. This documentation fails to be too im­
pressive, however, since it refers to opposition against sin, rather
than to the other factors which Fr. Congar obviously considers
legitimate objectives of contemporary reform within the Church. In
the course of this documentation he brings out some aspects of the
very necessary distinction between the condition of the people of
God under the old dispensation and that in which they have been
placed since the ratification of the New Covenant. In this same
chapter the author brings out two aspects of the Church, which
can be considered as a mystery or an institution (something prior
to the members who belong to it), and as a people or community.
In the light of this distinction, he brings out four meanings which
can be attached to the word “Church” in reference to reform. The
Church can be looked upon precisely as a reality' instituted by
God, as a people composed of individual men, as the group of
churchmen in charge of this society, and, in a concrete seme, in
a way that takes in all of the previous meanings.
The second chapter of this first part concerns the ways in which
the Church needs reform. Fr. Congar finds that such a reaction is
requisite if the Church is to meet successfully the temptations of
Pharisaism and of tending to act as a synagogue rather than as the
ecclesia. The first temptation, obviously, is that of formalism, the
danger that the Church and its members may be betrayed into
abandoning the essentials of Christian life in favor of the historic
forms into which that vital activity is traditionally channelled. The
second is the temptation not to follow the movement of the world.
The author is convinced that a mere moral reform among Catholics
would not be sufficient for the overcoming of this particular dif­
ficulty or temptation.
The third chapter of the first part is concerned with “Prophets
and Reformers.” It purports to show that the prophetical office,
as perpetual in the Church, includes the works of “reformers”
within the Church. The true “reformer” is depicted as a “prophet,”
in the traditional sense of the term.
The second part of the book deals with the conditions requisite
for a non-schismatic reforming movement within the Church.
These conditions, according to Fr. Congar, may be summed up in
this way. The “reformer” must be motivated by a purpose which
is primarily charitable and pastoral. He must take care to preserve

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communion with all. He must be patient. He must act so as to bring
about a return to principle and tradition, and not merci}' so as to
bring about the introduction of some novelty.
The third, and the longest, part of the book deals with a reform­
ing movement which did not have the characteristics described in
the previous section, the Protestant movement. In this third part,
Fr. Congar deals with the ecclesiology of the Protestant reformers,
and with that of Protestantism, taken as a whole, today. lie offers,
an amiably gentle adverse criticism of certain teachings which;
follow from this basic Protestant ecclesiology.
The vigorous conclusion of the book is devoted to a discussion
of the definite problem of attitudes toward reforming movements.
The author describes certain sources of opposition to these move­
ments in general. He describes himself as optimistic about the con­
temporary movement in France. His attitude is based on his con­
viction that there is nothing modernistic or revolutionary in the
movement, on the fact that many of the hierarchy have shown
themselves sympathetic toward it, and on the fact that the men of
the movement wish to be, and really are, children of the Church,,
animated by motives of pastoral charity. The danger of division
within the Church (a danger which he does not recognize as affect­
ing the Catholicism of France), is to be overcome by a kind of
charity,, through which the members of different groups refrain
from criticizing and opposing views or teachings that differ from
their own.
Three appendices close the book. The first of these treats of the
modern notion of collective responsibility. The second speaks of
two plans of fidelity within the Church. “Fidelity to the Christian
reality can be a fidelity to the state (J’état') actually attained, to the.
actually existent forms of that reality ; in brief, a fidelity to its pre­
sent. There can also be a fidelity to its future, or, to put the same
thing in other words, to its principle” (pp. 598 f.). The third and
last of these appendices, by far the most interesting and important
section of the book, deals with “The Mentality ‘of the Right’ and
Integrism in France.”
No outline of Fr. Cougar’s book can hope to give anything like
an adequate notion of the intricacy of exposition and reasoning it
contains. In part, of course, that intricacy is due to the genius of
the author himself. No one, whether he likes or dislikes Fr. Con-

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gar’s contributions to the literature of sacred theology, can fail to
recognize the boldness and originality of his thought and the pro­
fundity of his erudition. The intricacy, one might even say the
involvement, of this particular work springs from another source
also. The book purports to be, and was obviously intended to be,
a sort of theological explanation of the place of reformation in the
life of the Catholic Church. The author’s personal opinions are so
powerful, however, that they have insinuated themselves into the
very fabric of his text, to the effect that we find in Fraie et fausse
réforme dans l’église, not merely a theory of reforming activity
within the Church, but a strong case of special pleading in favor
of the men whom he designates as les catholiques ouverts and in
favor of his beloved oecumenical movement. The principal shortcomings of the book spring from failings and inaccuracies in that
special pleading.
The basic problem of the book is both legitimate and highly
interesting. The underlying question is this : “What are Catholics,
not placed in positions of ecclesiastical authority, to do when they
find themselves faced, within the Church, by conditions which they
regard as seriously detrimental to the good of souls?”
Fr. Congar, however, has given this basic problem a new twist.
He contends that in modern times there are certain new failings
within the Church which call for reforming activity on the part of
its children, and particular on the part of the “prophets” or re­
formers within its membership. It is his belief that, up until the
present day, the only sort of evil that men thought of removing
from the Church was to be found in the sins of some of its members.
On the other hand, he tells us (pp. 67 f.), “our contemporaries
know a new field of scandal : that which the Church can give with
reference to the movement of history in which the world of men
is drawn. More than by the sins of its members, men will be scan­
dalized by its failures to understand, by its narrowness, by its
delays.” The “movement of history” to which the learned author
refers, seems to include the passage from the status that prevailed
from the end of the Patristic times until the French Revolution,

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REFORM AND INTEGRALISM

the older mentality and the new. “St. Thomas or Albert the Great
could write, like Aristotle: ‘It matters little by whom or how a
thing has been said. What counts is to know whether it is true or
false.’ The moderns, to some extent at least (pour un peu) would
say : ‘It matters little whether a thing be true or false. The impor­
tant thing is. the manner, the tone, the way they led to the state­
ment (le cheminement suivi) : it is to know by whom and how it
has been said.’ ”
In other words, such is the mentality into which, according to
Fr. Congar, the “march of history” has drawn the men of our time.
And, since the men of our own era are supposed to be scandalized
precisely because the Church is represented as failing to understand
this mentality, and of being narrow toward it, the reforming ac­
tivity with which this book is concerned is apparently to be directed
against that very attitude on the part of the Church.
It must be emphasized at this point that Fr. Cougar neither
adopts nor approves *the crass and naive subjectivism which he
here attributes to the “moderns.” Indeed, in a later portion of the
book, when he has occasion to repeat the contention he voiced on
this subject (p. 616), he states that this attitude is easily recog­
nizable as “an exaggeration or even a malady of the judgment.”
He only contends that “a number of judicious and Catholic minds
have thought that there is a certain truth in the point of view of
the subject.” He refers to Mohler and to Newman as pioneers in
this respect.
'Here, I believe, Fr. Congar has somewhat misstated the facts.
Cardinal Newman, like many another Catholic writer of his time
and since, was definitely interested in the subjective processes that
go into the acts of belief and rational assent. But, and this is the
important fact, he was definitely interested in the objective truth
about these subjective processes. The interest in the “subjective”
which Fr. Congar finds characteristic of modern thinkers and the
interest in the “subjective” manifested by Newman were two quite
different things. Indeed, the terms which serve to designate them
should properly be called equivocal rather than even analogous.
Yet, in Fr. Cougar’s writing, it is with reference to the “modern
world’s” interest in the “subjective,” and definitely not with refer­
ence to Newman’s, that the Church is said to be “narrow” and thus
in need of reform.

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In thus introducing this “narrowness” of the Church, this alleged
inhospitality of the Church toward philosophies based upon the
“new” mentality, into the group of factors against which a reform­
ing movement is called upon to militate, Fr. Congar has beclouded
the basic question that underlies all his treatise. Especially since
the issuance of the Humani generis, we have had an authoritative
instruction about what our attitude should be toward philoso­
phies of this type. Catholic scholars should be cognizant of them.
They should utilize them so as to gain an appreciation of the good
they contain, and they should study them so as to be able to express
Catholic truth more effectively to people who have adopted these
systems of thought. They are not, however, to adopt these systems,
and they are certainly not free to co-operate in any system of “re­
form” which would attempt to bring these systems into the Church
on a plane equal or superior to that occupied by the perennial
philosophy itself.
Much of the book’s value as a tentative at solving the original
problem has been lost by this inclusion of “narrowness” among the
factors against which reforming movements should proceed. The
various scriptural and traditional arguments which go to prove the
need of real activity against undesirable conditions in the Church
can hardly be expected to apply to circumstances which have never
been thought of as undesirable until recent times. A great deal of
what is involved in the area of what Fr. Congar calls the Church’s
temptations in the line of “pharisaism” and of “acting as a syna­
gogue” turns out, on closer analysis, to be merely a wholehearted
obedience to the positive law of the Catholic Church. The charac­
teristics of a reformation without schism of which he speaks might
well be the qualities of a movement opposed to the directions of the
Holy Father and of the Catholic hierarchy as a whole, in the event
that the narrowness against which the “reformer” moves is merely
the narrowness of orthodoxy and the formalism he deprecates is
an attachment to legitimate forms that have been imposed by divine
or human ecclesiastical law.
The four conditions for a “réformisme sans schisme,” according
to Fr. Congar, are these: a primacy of charity and of pastoral pre­
occupation in the intentions of the movement itself, an intention to
remain within the communion of the whole, patience, and finally
a genuine renewal through a return to the principle and to tradi-

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tion. Ostensibly these are magnificent attributes for any movement,
but, in the context of the book itself, some of the concrete factors
thus designated are not entirely unquestionable.
Obviously any movement or activity within the Church should
■ bemotivated by charity, the love of friendship or benevolence for
God as He is known in the light of supernatural faith. This faith
consists in the firm and certain acceptance, on the word of God
-Himself, of the divinely revealed doctrine which Our Lord teaches
infallibly within His Church. The charity carries with it inevitably
an ungrudging obedience to the Church and a wholehearted affec­
tion for it : an obedience to the commands of our legitimate su­
periors here and now: an affection for the Church as it actually
exists.
Should there be some sinful condition within the Church, seri­
ously harmful to the good of souls for whom Our Lord died, it is
obvious that Catholics are bound to pray and to work for the over­
coming of that difficulty. Prayer, after all, remains the chief weapon
of the soldier for Christ.
There is, however, one way in which such difficulty will never
be found in the Church. There is a kind of practical infallibility in
the society founded by Our Saviour, an effect of His indwelling
within the Church which makes it impossible for any man to lose
his soul or to offend God by following the actual laws and pre­
cepts of the Church.
Some of those laws and precepts are divine in their origin, are
irreplaceable guides of Catholic life. There could never be any pos­
sibility of a legitimate reforming movement against these enact­
ments. Other laws fall within the category of positive human ecclestical law. It is a part of God's provision for the Church that
men can always save their souls and please Him by their obedience
to these precepts also.
Now as far as this human positive ecclesiastical law is concerned,
men are perfectly free to believe that it could be improved in its
applications. Thus, for example, there is the law according to which
the Mass in the Western Church is to be said in Latin, and there is
the perfectly legitimate aspiration of some fervent Catholics for a
vernacular liturgy. The aspiration itself is quite proper, but if any
priest were to bring himself actually to say his Mass in the ver­
nacular without the correct authorization, he would be guilty of
.serious sin. The movement for a vernacular liturgy is laudable as

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long as it remains a prayerful activity which directs its pleas to
the competent ecclesiastical superior and is scrupulously obedient
to the directives actually in force.
It is definitely not enough, then, simply to think that some
change in the human and positive enactments of the Church would
be advantageous in order to justify what could be called a reform­
ing action against the existent legislation. The binding force of this
legislation is sanctioned by God Himself. It is a legislation which
will and can lead men to heaven. But the human superior within
the Church is responsible for it. It is part of his terrible responsi­
bility that he will answer to God, not only for impediments which
his own failings may have thrown in the way of his fellowChristians’ salvation, but also for any neglect on his part to give
them the most effective possible direction to God within his power.
Applying these truths now to the problem of the language used
in the saying of the Mass (and liturgy is one of the fields within
which Fr. Congar envisions the existence of the present-day reform
movement), we see that there are certain advantages and disad­
vantages that follow upon the use of either Latin or the vernacular.
At present, in the Western Church, we are commanded to use the
Latin. The obvious implication is that the leadership of the Church
believes that this is the better course to follow. We have the guaran­
tee that in following this direction, we are obeying Christ in His
Vicar. We are bound to obey. If we feel that the other course is
better, we can pray that it may ultimately be adopted, we may
express our reasons and bring them to the attention of the proper
authority. But we still must give our loyal obedience to the direc­
tives we have at present.
The second of the conditions which Fr. Congar depicts as re­
quisite for a reform movement which does not end in schism is that
of remaining in the communion of the whole. Unfortunately the
many good things that Fr. Congar says in this section are some­
what beclouded by his teaching (in the second of his appendices),
about fidelity to the past and the future of the Church, as distinct
from fidelity to it here and now.
Even by itself, this “condition” has little immediate normative
value. It would be difficult to find an heretical or schismatic group
which did not believe and profess that its tenets and conduct were
quite in accord with the true Christianity of the past, and which
was not convinced that the Church itself would eventually catch up

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with them. Likewise such groups frequently consider themselves
to be in communion with “all true members of the Church” at the
very time that they obstinately refuse obedience to their lawful
ecclesiastical superiors, and ultimately to the Holy Father himself.
The true test of any genuine “reforming” movement within the
Church must be sought in its unfeigned and generous obedience
and attachment to the men who are authorized to teach and com­
mand them in the name of their Saviour.
The third of Fr. Congar’s conditions is patience. The fourth is
“that there should be a renewal by a return to the principle and to
tradition.” This final condition, it seems to me, is not described
in such a way that sufficient emphasis is placed on the fact that the
Catholic comes in contact with tradition in the actual teaching of
the Church’s magisterium.
The most interesting and important portion of the book is the
third appendix, on the subject of what Fr. Congar calls the “men­
tality of the right” and integralism in France. It is an energetic
essay on the nature of that movement which the author finds op­
posed to his own tendencies in his native land.
Fr. Congar believes that this intégrisme has a certain continuity,
and he is unwilling to think of the integralism of the opponents of
Modernism (he names Cardinals Billot and Merry del Vai) as
something distinct from that of the opponents of the contemporary
catholiques ouverts. He “does not believe that integralism is pri­
marily a doctrinal position” (p. 605). He teaches that the princi­
ple of integralism is to be found in the joining, in some Catholics,
“of their attitude of man-of-the-right and their Catholic fidelity”
(p.614).

1

We believe that integralism proceeds from an attitude of the right.
Such an attitude is characterized by a certain mistrust with regard to
the subject, to the man, and by a tendency to stress the determination
of things by way of authority. It is instinctively for what is done and
defined, and what has only to be imposed and received; and against
that which aspires to be, that which has not yet said all that it will be,
and that which ought still to be sought. It has little affection for what
comes from below, but loves that which is imposed, ready made, from
above (p. 617).
Fr. Congar lists eight positions which result from the application
of this attitude in matters of religion (pp. 617 f.), and four others.

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which characterize its application in matters of reform. His descrip­
tion of the opposition between the integralists and les catholiques
ouverts in his own country makes interesting reading.

So it has come to pass that, between the Catholic integralists and
catholiques ouverts à leur siècle, there is a genuine distrust, nourished,
I repeat, by the plot-psychosis [which Fr. Congar believes almost in­
separable from the interrelations of groups, as distinct from indi­
viduals]. On the one hand the Catholic integralists always fear that
the enemy will enter into the place by drawbridges that have been let
down. They fear that the others are compromising with error, and they
sniff around everywhere for the odor of heresy. The catholiques ouverts,
on the other hand, warned by experiences that are far from being imag­
inary, always suspect the integralists of denouncing them to Rome.
This, it must be well understood, engenders in them sentiments of dis­
trust colored (nuancée) with a kind of contempt; a contempt which
springs readily from the feeling that there can be found, among the
said integralists, both an enormous ignorance of history and certain
a priori [notions] which alone allow such ignorance. The integralists
are sullenly conscious of this [attitude]. They are offended and irritated
by it, and they seek compensation by redoubling their dogmatic rigidity,
by distrust and by warnings (p. 612).
We must remember, of course, that the appendix with which
we are dealing refers explicitly and primarily to conditions in
France. Fr. Congar declares that all the integralists whom he has
known personally have been men-of-the-right (p. 611). He also
asserts that if one or another of these men has “evolved,” he has
found that the man “has not done this in matters of religion with­
out doing it in the line of his political orientations, at least in the
sense that he has ceased to abhor the Republic and 1789” (ibid.).
Yet it is not for their political views or lack of them that the in­
tegralists have incurred the displeasure of the catholiques ouverts,
and of Fr. Congar. The integralists are opposed because of their
dogmatic rigidity, because they seem to be heresy-hunters, and
because there is a prudent suspicion that they have reported certain
teachings of the catholiques ouverts to the Roman curia.
The author of Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’église has very
strong feelings about the last-named practice. He speaks (p. 608)
of “the detestable habit, which some French Catholics have, of de­
nouncing each other to Rome.” He seems to forget that the Code
of Canon Law obliges Ordinaries to submit certain books “to the

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judgment of the Apostolic See.” He likewise fails to take into
account the fact that the same canon declares it to be the duty “of
all the faithful, especially of clerics, of men who hold ecclesiastical
authority, and of men who are especially well instructed, to report
to the local Ordinaries or to the Apostolic See, books which they
consider harmful.” The canon goes on to state that this obliga­
tion is especially incumbent upon the Legates of the Holy See,
local Ordinaries, and the Rectors of Catholic universities. Signifi­
cantly a decree of the Holy Office, issued April 17, 1943 (and
therefore within the Pontificate of Pope Pius XII), lists also the
doctores of the Catholic universities throughout the world among
; those to whom the obligation mentioned in canon 1397, § 1, applies
peculiari titulo.
It is difficult to believe that Fr. Congar had any other type of
activity in mind when he spoke of denunciations to Rome on the
part of integralists. Yet he makes common cause with les catholiques
ouverts, who are represented as mistrusting and despising the in­
tegralists for something which is, after all, merely obedience to the
strict and frequently repeated instruction set down in the Church s
Code of Canon Law.
The religious position of the integralists is also represented as
characterized by a rigidity of doctrine. All that this expression
would seem to mean is a resistance to any teaching which the integralist regards as involving a change in Catholic doctrine. Cer­
tainly there can be little to stigmatize in this attitude. And just as
certainly the designation of the activity of the integralists under
these terms makes it difficult to see how Fr. Congar can believe
that theirs is not primarily a doctrinal position.
One central argument of the book, and in particular one plea of
this third appendix, would seem to run toward the conclusion that
® Catholic who is not in a position of authority in the Church has
no right to disagree publicly with the teachings and writings of les
catholiques ouverts by alleging that the contents of these teachings
and writings are not in accord with Catholic doctrine. Ί hat is cer­
tainly the inference expressed in Fr. Cougar’s conclusion, when he
teaches (p. 574), that “a real and cordial communion among the
faithful or spiritual families within one and the same Christianity
would suppose that these faithful or groups of faithful would not
sot themselves up as judges or censors of each other, but that they
should soon tend to see that their positions are mutually comple-

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mentary.” It is certainly the inference contained in the third ap­
pendix, where the integralists are represented as mistrusted and
despised precisely because they have said that the teachings of
their opponents were opposed to Catholic truth.
It is this combination of timidity and irritation which makes
Fr. Congar’s position so difficult to appreciate. He is convinced
that the various theories and teachings offered in the camps of
the integralists and their opponents perfect and complement one
another. Yet he seems to be convinced that there is something evil
in another man’s declaration of his belief that they do not. He
appears to forget that, if a man states or teaches publicly that some
definite statement of another Catholic is not in accord with the
Catholic truth, the accuser is expected to back up his charge. If he
makes an inaccurate charge publicly, then he has automatically
lost or at least seriously damaged whatever credit he may pre­
viously have had as a theologian. In the event that he should make
such an incorrect accusation to persons in ecclesiastical authority,
he has certainly lost the confidence of these men, even though his
action will never be known by the general public.
And, on the other hand, when any man acts as a teacher or
writer on theological subjects, he automatically lays himself open
to criticism. It may well be that a certain amount of that criticism
is motivated by unworthy reasons. It may well be that some critics
oppose the books or the teachings of others within the Church be­
cause they dislike the authors or their associates. If they act in this
way, they will answer to God for the sins against charity or justice
involved in their conduct. Their inner motives, however, need not
concern the authors they have criticized or the world of theology
in general.
But, whatever his inmost motives may have been, if a critic
should make the assertion that a definite statement is contained in
a book, and that this statement is opposed to theological truth, and
if anything like serious evidence should be brought to bear in favor
of this assertion it is definitely the business of the writer thus ac­
cused to examine his own teachings. Where the accusation turns
out to be accurate, it is his duty to withdraw and to disavow the
error he has propounded. Where the accusation turns out to be in­
accurate, it is his duty, or at least his privilege, to defend his own
position. In any event, it is unworthy of the calling of a theologian
to repel adverse criticism by alleging that the men who sponsored

REFORM AND INTEGRALISM

139

it are trouble-makers, heresy-hunters, or, secretly or otherwise,
adherents of an unpopular or dead political movement.
Joseph Clifford Fenton

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.
Fifty Years Ago

The leading article in the February, 1902, issue of The American
Ecclesiastical Review, contributed by Fr. Vincent McNabb, O.P., is
entitled “The First Eirenicon of the Twentieth Century.” The Eireni­
con” to which the author refers is England and the Holy See by Spencer
Jones, with a preface by Lord Halifax. Both Mr. Jones and Lord Hali­
fax are in agreement that the primacy of spiritual jurisdiction in the
Church of Christ was granted to St. Peter, and that union with the
Apostolic See is an essential factor toward reunion. The book pre­
sents as a commendable principle the saying of an Anglican vicar :
‘Instead of saying that Rome is hopeless because she will not change,
we ought rather to say that the fact of Rome’s not changing is proved
to be an abiding fact and must be reckoned with as such. In other
words, instead of saying that our end is to change Rome, we should
say that the starting-point of our enterprise is the fact that she can­
not change. In the same way I should say that the proper function of
the Anglican Church and also of the dissenting bodies is to change
and to move, since this in fact is what they have ever done.” . . . Dr.
James Walsh contributes a lengthy article on “Mental Diseases and
Spiritual Direction” in which he explains the influence on mental
Processes of mania, melancholia and “circular insanity.” . . - Fr.
McSorley, Ç.S.P., (still active in the sacred ministry) continues his
study of “Hugh of St. Victor, Mystic,” of whom he says: “ranked
first among the scholars of his age, he was likewise venerated for a
sanctity that his brethren understood to be far above the ordinary. . . .
Fr. H. Thurston, S.J., of London, writes on one of the first works
that appeared in print, the Selen Würtsgart, printed at Ulm toward
the end of the fifteenth century. ... In the Analecta we find a decree
°f the Congregation of the Inquisition, admonishing Ordinaries to take
great care that the altar bread and altar wine be such as will leave no
doubt regarding the validity of the Holy Sacrifice. ... A correspondent
In the Conference section asks how the genuineness of the candles
sold as “wax candles” can be tested, and is told that “pure bees-wax
jvill burn without any residue ; where a residue occurs, mineral matter
is present.” . . . The Library Table contains an account of recent writ­
ings on Philosophy, Sacred Scripture and Theology.
F. J. C.