GELINEAU ON CHURCH MUSIC

VOICES AND INSTR Ll. MENTS IN CHRISTIAN WORSHIP, by P. Gelineau, S.J. (Burns and Oates, 25s.). PAUL COUTURIER AND UNITY IN CHRIST, by Geoffrey Curtis. C.R. (S.C.M. Press, 35s.). THE CATHOLIC VIEWPOINT ON THE LIEGE TRIAL, ed. by M. G. Carroll (Mercier Press, 5s,). HOW TO PRAY, by Madeleine Danielou (St. Paul's Publications, 12s. fid.). OUR FATHER, by Cardinal Grente (Scepter, 7s.). BAKHITA, PEARL OF THE SUDAN, by Aloysius Roche (St. Paul's Pub
lications, 3s. 6d.).
PARISH Priests have been asked by the Council to make a great act of hope, of trust. "The liturgy 'through which the work of our re demption is accomplished' . . . is the outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their lives, and mani fest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church"—so speaks the Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy.
'I hen I remember the parish churches I have been in, and those of which 1 have been the parish priest. and I realise with a tneu amvinia culpa how great has been my failure to teach the faithful of those churches about the power that is given them by Almighty God.
Flow remote that declaration of the Council seems from our common practice! How we are all asked to make a great effort to understand and use the sacred liturgy. There is so-much to learn.
Pere Gelineau. in Voices and Instruments in Christian Worship, has given us a meaty hook. It needs to be read carefully and with a pencil in hand.
But the more people who read it and learn from it (and this is not a book only for specialists, much as they too will learn from it), the more will the worship of God be an integrated, whole thing and come closer to the ideal set before us by the Council.
The Council has given us the Constitution. Now it is for us, the faithful, by every means at our disposal, to put it into practice. To this end Pere Gelineatt's book w ill he invaluable; it talks real sense. May a reprint soon be
needed. B.B.
Another pressing concern of the Vatican Council is to make us forward looking in matter ecumenic-al. True. Paul Couturier and Unity in Christ is inevitably a glance backwards. But it is always good to know more of those who have in their lives and prayers anticipated the mind and wishes of John XXIII.
Abbe Couturier w as undoubtedly one of these; he started his life as an unknown schoolmaster, but his love and understanding so grew that "Anglicans who mould have bored, or even infuriated one another at home, when they met one another at Lyon in the Abbe's company. found a new value in each others sight.
"The Parstlist, the central churchman, the evangelical, the common or garden Anglo-Catholic —he has helped us to find one another in the Christ of our bap "I he ..re." is no doubt that Abbe Couturier exercised a real spiritual power and fascination over his many Anglican friends. His life and work furthered very much that association and friendship of certain French clergy with Papalists and Anglo-Catholics which has gone on for many years and still obtains.
The author has produced a labour of love, and in a scholarly way has amassed a great amount of evidence. The sad and hard things are all told (Abbe Couturier was three times refused permission to go to England) without a trace of anything but charity, and vuilb that respect for authoritative decisions which should grace the people.
All hearts of all Christian All through runs a note of admiration for this singleminded priest, this undaunted worker for the unity of all Christians. R.P.
The Catholic Viewpoint on the Liege Trial is unfortunately a catch-penny and misleading title. It will be a pity if it prevents the book being read by doctors and all those concerned with the problem within families of maladjusted or malformed children, whether Catholic or otherwise.
The collected articles, mainly by French doctors, were originally in the series of Cahiers Laennec; they are not concerned with the trial as such, nor do they present as their primary object a Catholic moral evaluation of the issues, however much such moral evaluation underlies their approach. Rather they use the occasion of the trial to consider various broad issues there raised.
A first article explains the very real difficulties of any clinching theoretical testing of new drugs before they are marketed for clinical use (a revealing and rather alarming article to the layman if he can take the polysyllabic medical words). The next article makes suggestions for legislation in these matters.
Perhaps both articles sutler from a certain Chauvinism. It is the articles that follow that are really valuable, both those by the doctors and those by three Jesuit priests.
With real compassion and psychological insight they probe and suggest the best solutions for the problems incurred by any family that has to adjust itself to the presence of one of their own flesh and blood who is in one way or another handicapped. The whole range of this problem of suffering is faced up to, without false sentiment and without smooth and too easy answers. C.R.
How to Pray which sounds a rather presumptuous version of the French title Vous prierez ainsi in fact a truly humble hook, the product of a devoted teacher's lifelong attempt to teach prayer to schoolgirls.
Passages of a meditative character were read to them after Mass. They were designed to "spark off" a genuine and intimate contact with our Lord.
The first section consists. of short reflections on St. Matthew s and St, John's gospels, the second on the liturgical seasons. A simple and attractive Stations of the Cross is appended. Many will pray better with the help of this book.
Another book on prayer is Our Father, a reprint of a valuable book which first appeared in English five years ago. Cardinal Grente makes profound comments on "The prayer to which -all prayers" in Pius XII's words "must necessarily he related". One may regret that the publishers have not taken the opportunity of eliminating Gallicisms, reducing exclamation marks, and abandoning the rendering of Varsovie by Varsovia: what is wrong with Warsaw?
The recent canonisation of the Uganda martyrs is a vigorous reminder of the .sanctity that has come and will yet come from Africa. Bakhita, Pearl of the Sudan is the striking tale of a girl who ho was born "in one of the darkest corners of Darkest Africa, torn from her parents at the age of nine and sold into slavery for ten years."
Her Arab captors called her Bakhita. "Lucky one". They were wiser and more farseeing than they knew. For, once she was released, she received thesgift of faith. In due course she took the vows of religion and "she acquitted herself with special distinction and ended her days amid the tears and acclamations of the whole countryside."
R.P.