IN A FEW WORDS

Repository Christmas cards & modern art
By 7otter
Anti-liturgical
OWING to the fact that our Christmas card suppliers are no longer so ready to send us samples for reproduction or evaluation, we are unable this year to print any. I must say 1 have yet to see many cards from Catholic sources which endeavour to express something of the revival of Christian art with a contemporary appeal which is now common on the Continent. but still too rare in this country. To many readers this may seem far-fetched criticism, yet we should remember that a contemporary art expression is essentially an indirect expression of the liturgical revival, one of whose purposes it is to make our whole Catholic people express their spiritual life together as people of the world of the second half of the 20th century. With serious and popular art, posters, advertising, design, etc. becoming more and more contemporary, it is all wrong that nearly all our popular Catholic art should be of an outdated sentimentality and imagery. One only has to compare the virile, objective art of the ages of faith with the slobbering. spiritually titillating repository art of today to see the difference. The best cards T have seen are from "Christian Action", a virile movement whether we agree with it or not. There is a Laura Knight drawing of "Mother and Child" which can please all; a John Piper Nativity from a piece of French Romanesque sculpture which will nor please everyone; and a moving drawing of a coloured boy by Hyman Segal.
The blue calendar
WHILE there are very few good Catholic artists at work in this country — or maybe there are plenty, but they get no orders —the best alternative is to go back to the past. And this is what the enlightened Fr. Bidone has done once again in his annual blue "Our
Lady's Calendar" and in his Christmas cards. The Wilton Diptych, representing Edward III's gift to England of Our Lady as an inalienable gift, is on the cover. The British Museum, the Victoria & Albert, ancient wall-paintings in
non-Catholic cathedrals and churches, these arc the sources of his well reproduced pictures. Not only because these are good, but because they are an annual act of enlightened courage, I hope more and more readers will support his great work for the aged by applying to the Sons of Divine Providence, 25 Lower Teddington Road, Hampton Wick, Kingston-onThames, Surrey.
Enquiry priest
AMONG those who took part in a recent ITV religious discussion, which included the Index as a topic, was Fr. Nigel Lam, the new director of the Catholic Enquiry Bureau. Fr. tarn fl learn from the "Augustinian") was for eight years at St. Augustine's, Tunbridge Wells. He is a convert. The right man for the eight job, as the magazine p&nts out: "After all, he became a Catholic by enquiring first." In the same spirit he has travelled "into the blue and sand of Sahara to Timbuctoo just to see what it looked like." He sailed to Iceland and got the U.S, Air Force to fly him round the island to make sure of catching his boat home. He was planning a trip to Spitzbergen when he was selected for th:s job. He has also made the trip to Moscow. where he had amusing experiences. Those who saw him on the programme will realise that personality and knowledge equip him ad
mirably for his work. 1 wonder how many people knew that Dumas was placed on the Index because of his glorification of duelling. Certainly not I.
Wiser than most
KIND visitor to small boy, son of a Service family which has at last found a house and settled down. "Aren't you glad to have a nice house at last?" Small boy: "Oh. we've always had a nice Monte. Now at last we've got a house to keep it in." (Sent in by reader U.K.).