The School Year
WRITING a few hours before the annual dinner of the Stonyhurst Association—at which the Cardinal, surely the most untiring and devoted of high ecclesiastics, is to be present—I can't help thinking of the enormous school changes that are likely to be brought about through the changing of the times of public examinations.
Staggered holidays are the cause, but what is to happen to the boys' summer holidays? Are they to be shortened, and all three holidays made equal in length? In a boy's mind the two months' summer holiday is an enormous break, and I cannot conceive how he will take it in his schoolyear stride.
Summer at Stonyhurst with its wonderful countryside seemed to work in with the spirit of joy and freedom at the prospect. of the ending of another year's grind.
I write feelingly, perhaps, because my holidays this year coincide with the end of
schoolboys' third term. Alas, they end much sooner!
Ford Theology
T CONGRATULATE a reader who has I tackled the Editor of the Ford Times, who says that " so long as man, woman or child has religious belief, whether he or she honours the Pope or the Head of the Salvation Army, Christ, Mohammed or Buddha, seems to the writer extremely 'unimportant; and grievous mischief is done to the cause of religion as a whole when
idle folk wrangle about this, that or other detail."
In fact, as his Ford and Master says: " History (and a fortiori theology) is hunk!"
My correspondent has answered to say that the head-hunters of Borneo's religious belief is collecting heads; would he think it unimportant it they tried to collect his?
like, too, the gibe " idle folk," embracing presumably all who do not worship the Ford system.
Send Him This
Why not let the Editor of Ford Times hear the story of the Englishmen (as might he himself) telling an ex-cannibal native preparing his evening stew that what the missionaries told him about God and the Bible was all bunk. " If you're right and the missionaries are wrong," answered the native, " then you go into my stew."
Example of C.A.
CONGRATULATIONS to Bradford and District Council of Catholic Action. They have sent us a truly model report on the results of the recent Press Campaign in their district. It shows that 885 new readers for Catholic papers have been obtained. The circulation figures for each church and each paper are all carefully tabulated. If all districts would do the same, how much simplified would be the work of our circulation departments.
By the way, there are quite a number of
churches where the CATHOLIC HERALD will not sell at all. Arc they churches in poorer districts, in richer districts, in the country, in towns? No, they are exclusively churches in very smug and very self-satisfied suburbs. When I collect them all, I shall publish the names.
The Duke of Windsor
EVERYBODY is interested in lesser news about the royal family. I was told the other day from a very close medical source that the King, like so many delicate people, is growing steadily stronger as he grows older and works harder, that the Duke of Windsor telephones every day to members of the family, and that Princess Elizabeth refused to open her birthday presents this year until "Uncle David's " had arrived. As soon as she had seen it, she ran to the 'phone and spoke to him for a quarter of an hour.
If . . . in Spain
6 6 MANY evils would have been avoided
in Spain, and even, perhaps, the actual tragedy, if the Catholicism of many Catholics had been clearer and more coherent, instead of being merely sentimental and ritualistic, if the Gospels had been better known and followed; if the Papal Encyclicals had been more deeply studied and applied. . . ." So writes Mgr. Enrico Pla y Deniel, Bishop of Salamanca, Nationalist Spain, in a recent pastoral.
THE JOTTER