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Sweeping Criticism StRe---Near the beginning of Fr. Crane's Idler, which is evidently meant to carry great weight, and even to be a decisive judgment against " Towards," he says, " It is as the result of careful consideration of Captain Curd's programme that I find myself compelled to disagree with the idea of a programme in general . .."; and near the end he says, " Our task is to take this world and to try and so order it that thc men and women who live in it may bc able to serve God with all their hearts,"
I cannot reconcile these two statements, even though Fr. Crane goes on to say, " Before we try to order this world as we should like to see it ordered, let us be quite sure of what we want and of how we intend to get what we want." This would be in place if he were approving of the idea of a programme and only criticising a particular programme as poor, but it seems to mean nothing after a judgment against any programme. We are to order the world for good—without a programme of the means to be taken. Fr. Crane cannot possibly mean this and I hope he will make it plainer what he does mean; and if what he really means is that he thinks the programme of " Towards " poor, then I must say that I consider his criticism of it very sweeping. Points 6 and 7, for example, which are among those which he says are open to criticism, seem to me to come straight out of the Social Encyclicals.
J. K. Hevoon. Tunbridge Wells.
A Considerable Correction
SIR.—May I point out a printing error, which occurred in a letter of mine which you published in your issue for November 22. The sentence as it ran in the CATHOLIC HERALD was as fellows: " From the economic point of view those same points will, in my opinion, still provide an adequate solution of our economic difficulties which are legion and which, as often as not result from miscalculation rather than from deliberate malice." The sentence as contained in the MSS. I sent you was exactly similar to the above with the exception that inadequate was in the place of adequate. As you can see, the difference in sense is considerable!
PAUL R. CRANE, Si.
Heythrop College, Chipping Norton Oxon.