ITS PURELY RELIGIOUS PURPOSE Letters which have reached the C.F.S. recently show that a certain amount of misapprehension exists regarding the precise nature of the C.F.S.
The term " film society " has become associated with the idea of a group of people who obtain for exhibition among themselves banned films, foreign films or films not generally in circulation. Alternatively the idea is of a group who are making films for the pure love of it, in the same way as amateur dramatic societies act plays for the love of it.
Both these ideas rest on commercial cinema; the first obviously so, the second because in making their own films the amateur societies take the professional cinema as a pattern.
The Catholic Film Society is entirely distinct from the commercial cinema; it seeks neither to compete with it nor to imitate it.
The C.F.S. is a society for making films whose purpose is to teach Catholic doctrine. The film medium, and particularly the wordless film, is felt to be admirably suited to the presentation of such subjects, there being an affinity between the miming film and the rhythmic miming of medieval tradition which ig the natural expression of religion.
Although its first consideration is the teaching of Catholic doctrine, for which the film is simply being used as a means, the C.F.S. is nevertheless doing the art of film a service by developing the miming film from the point where it was left by the introduction of the talkie.
The C.F.S. believes that the talkie film will ultimately destroy itself by approximation to the stage, leaving the field practically clear for the miming film which is restrained and therefore in its nature religious.
'MVP
Annual Procession at Whetstone
In spite of adverse weather the annual outdoor procession took place on Sunday evening, July 26, from the Catholic Church of St. Mary Magdalen, Whetstone. The Rev. Fr. Leroux, first parish priest of Whetstone, who found a great increase in the number of Catholics in the neighbourhood since he left the parish in 1929, celebrated solemn High Mass in the morning, assisted by the Rev. J. Wolfs, of the Fathers of Sion, and the Rev. Philip Dayer, formerly of Bank House, Athenxtim Road, Whetstone, exercising for the first time the order of subdeaconate recently conferred upon him at St. Edmund's College, Ware.
The Third Number of " Ireland To-day"
The August number of " Ireland Today " contains much good reading. The foreign commentary is piquant and wellinformed. Irish, of course, and honest, Michael Tierney's " Christianity and the Social Tradition," covers interesting ground in an essay inspired by Mr. T. S. Eliot.
There is a high-spirited article with a pointed reference to Northern Ireland.
All the contents deserved printing. There is some passable verse, some discriminating reviews; in fine a pot pourri of the things in which literary men take their pleasure.