Saints for the times : five addresses delivered in the nationwide Catholic Hour, produced by the National Council of Catholic Men, in cooperation with the National Broadcasting Company, from October 28, 1945 through November 25, 1945 tv K Me. 60.V TUo«ua H I v\4 >3 +0 / . . - wm^ SAINTS FORIHE TIM &T AUGUSTINE ST THOMAS MORE J.H, NEWMAN MATT TALBOT Rcv.lltomas )* NWCarfct^ The Catholic Hour SAINTS FOR THE TIMES t ' T ‘5 1 ji'l SAINTS FOR IHI TIMES Five addresses^ delivered in the nationwide Catholic Hour, produced by the National Council of Catholic Men, in cooperation with the National Broadcasting Company, from October 28, 1945 through November 25, 1945. BY REV. THOMAS ]. McCARTHY Editor of ‘The Tidings,” Chairman of the Far Western Division of the Catholic Press Association. NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CATHOLIC MEN 1312 Massachusetts Ave., N. W. Washington 5, D. C. Printed in U. S. A. By OUR SUNDAY VISITOR PRESS HUNTINGTON, INDIANA Imprimatur: JOHN FRANCIS NOLL, Bishop of Fort Wayne Nihil Obstat: REV. T. E. DILLON Censor Librorum DeaMed TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Newman—100 Years 7 St. Augustine—A Warning From the Past 13 St. Thomas Aquinas—The Strategy of Truth 19 St. Thomas More—The Price of Principle 25 Matt Talbot, The Common Man 31 NEWMAN—100 YEARS Address Given On October 28, 1945 If you had been in Little- more, a village not many miles removed from Oxford, England, late at night on October 7, 1845, you would have marked perhaps the heavy downpour, the mean- ness and drabness of the village itself—and you might have no- ticed a small, shabbily-dressed man making his way through the rain to one of the cottages. That would be Father Dominic Barberi—^but of course you would not know that—and he would be making his way to- ward the cottage of Mr. New- man. What you would not have noticed was that History walked through the rain with Father Barberi and when the door of Newman’s cottage was opened to receive that remarkable Ital- ian Passionist priest, he did not go in alone. History accompani- ed him, and noted that as he dried himself before the fire, a tall, sparse, angular man—^that would be Newman—entered the room and with no word, swiftly strode to the fireplace where Father Barberi stood, fell on his knees and asked to be received into the Roman Catholic Church. That scene—the midnight hour, the rain and wind outside, and the two absorbed figures of New- man and Barberi before the fire —is one that history has treasur- ed. So much so that 100 years have done nothing to disturb its dramatic effect—indeed the passage of 100 years has stamp- ed it indelibly in the memory of all who have ever read the story of John Henry Newman. This month, in every part of the world, men have paused to pay respect to the name and in- fluence of this celebrated English writer and clergyman on the centenary of his conversion to Catholicism. Not Catholics only but non-Catholics as well have had their part in this tribute of respect, for Newman’s appeal is widespread. It is not difficult to understand why his appeal is so great. So long as the human heart responds to the aches and trials of this life, so long as men rejoice in the vindication of an injured name, then for that length of days will John Henry Newman exert his impel- ling fascination over the world of men. His name stirs up a 8 SAINTS FOR THE TIMES whole host of memories, some sad, some joyful, all of them rich and abiding. He was born in London, at the turn of the 19th ^century, of a well established banking family. The eldest of six child- ren, he gave promise early in life of the great things he was later to accomplish. At the age of 15 he entered Trinity College, Oxford, and upon his graduation four years later he was awarded a fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford. At this time he also began his studies for the An- glican Ministry and at the age of 23 he received Anglican or- ders and became a curate at St. Clement's Church, Oxford. Two years later he was appointed tu- tor at Orid College—a very high honor for so young a man. And then there began one of the hap- piest periods of his whole life. Completely capturing the fancy and heart of young Oxford, he became the most powerful single influence in the whole Univer- sity. All this before he was 30 years of age. His name was al- most a legend. When he was ap- pointed Vicar of St. Mary's Church, which was the Univer- sity church, he extended his al- ready great influence and he brought all of Oxford to hear him preach each Sunday. Mat- thew Arnold who was one of his hearers could still recall, across the space of 40 years, enough of Newman's magnetism to write thus of him : “Who could resist the charm of that spirit- ual apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary's rising into the pulpit and then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music, subtle, sweet and mourn- ful." It is hard for us to picture today a man so young, with such power to move minds and wills, as the youthful Newman posses- sed. No one quite like him had ever been seen before at Oxford. It goes without saying that no one since has had the influence he wielded. As he walked through the streets of Oxford, his head held high, about him the look of one who dwelt apart, stu- dents would interrupt their con- versations with a whispered: “There goes Newman." And all unconscious of the worship- ful place he held in their hearts he would hurry along his way. This almost idyllic existence in which Newman was able to fur- ther his studies as well as exert NEWMaN—100 YEARS a salutary influence upon the University students was, inter- rupted in 1833 by a Mediterran- ean voyage which he took with his intimate friend, Hurrel Froude. It was on this trip that he wrote what many consider the best loved hymn in the English language, ‘‘Lead Kindly Light.” Upon his return to England, he became a part of a program which later on was knowh as the Oxford Movement. The Oxford Movement grew out of a desire on the part of spiritual lead- ers like Newman, Keble, and Pusey, to stem the rising tide of secularism then threatening the Church of England. It re- ceived a strong impetus from the studies of the early Chris- tian Fathers which Newman and his friends had instituted in the hope that they could revivify the Church of England and strengthen it by recalling it to the practices and disciplines of the early Christian Church. Numerous tracts or pamphlets were issued having as their sub- jects such things as infant bap- tism and confession. These tracts were enormously popular and ex- erted a very wide influence upon the Anglican clergy. So much so that fears were expressed as to just how far they were to be encouraged. However, it was not until 1841, eight years after it started, that the full impact of the Oxford Movement was felt, and it was Tract 90 written by Newman which precipitated a controversy which was to rage for years. In Tract 90 Newman maintained that one could hold to the 39 Articles of the Church of England and still believe in Catholic doctrine as expounded in the Roman Catholic Council of Trent. He was saying in effect that, rightly understood, . the 39 Articles had not marked off the Church of England from the Church of Rome. Bitter charges now began to rain about the head of Newman. He was called a traitor and the charge of disloyalty was lodged against him. He was asked by the Bishop of Oxford to stop issuing any more pamphlets. He was held in great suspicion. His intellec- tual honesty, however, fore- bade him to retreat from the po- sition he had adopted. Pressed in on every side now, his con- fidence shaken, his statements misunderstood, he felt that he needed peace and quiet in order to search his soul. He retired to a cottage at Littlemore . with a few of his close friends to spend the next two years eval- 10 SAINTS FOR uating his intellectual and spirit- ual position. He resigned his pulpit at St. Mary’s, but not before preaching one of the most moving sermons of the English language. He called it, appropriately enough, 'The Parting of Friends.” We can well imagine the setting : It was late Sunday afternoon, the year 1843, the University church crowded with men and women whose hearts were heavy with grief and sadness, for they had more than a suspicion that their well loved guide and spirit- ual director was speaking to them for the last time as their pastor. A happy, beautiful chap- ter in Newman’s own life was closing, and so, as he bade fare- well, he could say only: ‘'Oh brethren ! 0 kind and affection- ate hearts! Oh loving friends! Should you know anyone whose lot it has been by writing or by word of mouth in some degree to help you thus to act, if he has told you what you knew about yourself or what you did not know, has read to you your wants or feelings and comforted you by the very reading, has made you feel that there was a higher life than this daily one, a bright- er world than that you see, or en- couraged you or sobered you or THE TIMES opened a way to the inquiring or soothed the perplexed, if what he has said or done has ever made you take interest in him and feel well inclined toward him, remember such a one in days to come though you hear him not, and pray for him that in all things he may know God’s will and at all times he may be ready to fulfill it.” This was the last outcry from the broken heart of a man torn between two loves, the love for truth and the love for his friends and associations. His love for truth ‘ won even though it threatened to crush him com- pletely. He suffered through the next two years and then his way was made clear—he sent for Father Dominic Barberi and through him he made his sub- mission to the Catholic Church. Two years later he was or- 4 dained a Roman Catholic priest. It wiill be necessary to pass swiftly over the next 10 or 12 years of his life. It is sufficient to say they were busy years crowded with activity of one kind or another. In controversy, which he extremely disliked, it seemed that he was the only one capable of articulating the Ro- man Catholic position to the English mind. Some writers NEWMAN—100 YEARS 11 nave gone to great pains to show that Newman's years as a Catholic were marked by frus- tration and unhappiness, but we are far enough away now from the man to see that this is not true. The things which New- man stood for, in the main, he saw in his own lifetime accom- plished. What deeply pained Newman more than anything else was the suspicion in which he was still held by a large number of the English people. His reasons for having embraced Roman Cathol- icism were never adequately set forth and so the English people might have been pardoned for feeling that Newman had de- serted the Church of England in a critical hour. In 1864 his chance came to win. back his good name with the English people and it came about in an unusual way. A review of James Anthony Froude's ‘‘History of England" was published in Mac- Millan's Magazine by Charles Kingsley, in the course of which review the latter went out of his way to accuse Newman and the Catholic priesthood of winking at the sin. of lying. Newman ef- fectively answered Kingsley, and the latter in his weak reply pro- voked Newman into writing what is now known as his Apologia Pro Vita Sua. It was a classic from the day of publication. In this great work Newman goes back over his whole life, dissect- ing his mind and showing his readers the operations of his intellect as it worked its way through Calvinism, Anglicanism, and finally into Catholicism. The whole English world quickly ac- claimed its author and Newman found himself a national hero. No one reading that book could accuse Newman of insincerity for having embraced Roman Catholicism. It was the only thing he could have done and still maintain his intellectual honesty. With one master stroke he had won back his place in the hearts of Englishmen. Oxford Uni- versity welcomed him back and England was proud that his name had been vindicated. His cup of happiness was filled to overflowing when Pope Leo XIII bestowed upon him the red hat of Cardinal. Newman cared not so much about the gorgeous red robes of his state, but he did enjoy the fact that an of- ficial sanction had been placed upon his work by the Holy Fa- ther. His death in 1890 was 12 SAINTS FOR THE TIMES mourned all through Christen- dom. We cannot mark here the influence of his thought upon our time but it has been consid- erable. Neither can we mark the influence of his personality, par- ticularly upon England and the United States, but that too has been considerable. Let us re- cord simply that John Henry Cardinal Newman saw clearly, where others could only guess, just how deeply secularism was eating into every walk of life. He saw with the clear eye of a prophet the shape of things to come, and it was a disturbing and distressing shape: have thought,” he wrote toward the end of his life, ‘‘that a time of widespread infldelity was coming and through all these years the waters have been, in fact, rising as a deluge. I look for the time, after my life, when only the tops of the mountains will be seen like islands in a waste of waters.” That time is here! It is our generation that is in danger of being submerged. It is our gen- eration that must stand on the high ground, what little is left above the deluge. It is our gen- eration that must learn from Newman that intense, personal, practical belief in God which is the only effective anchor in times of great distress. It is our gen- eration, so little used to prayer, which must turn now and beseech God with the same earnestness with which Newman besought Him when he prayed : “May He, as of old, choose the foolish things of this world to confound the wise ,and the weak things of this world' to confound the things which are mighty! May He sup- XK)rt us all the day long, ‘til the shades lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed and the fever of life is over and our work is done ! Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging and a holy rest and peace at the last! Amen.” ST. AUGUSTINE—A WARNING FROM THE PAST Address Given On November 4, 1945 There is no one so alive as a dead saint. Our world does not understand this fact because our world does not understand the saint. It is constantly bestowing immortality ,for instance, upon its own favored ones . . . and yet with their death they are swallowed up in silence and we never hear of them again. With the saint it is altogether dif- ferent. Often enough he is com- pletely ignored, or when noticed, is derided by the world in which he lives. Only when he dies does the full significance of his words and actions reveal itself. St. Augustine is certainly our witness here. He has been dead over 1500 years and yet there has scarcely been a time in the 15 centuries since his death when his words have carried greater weight, when his per- sonality has been more vividly impressed upon the world of men. Today St. Augustine is very much alive. Part of his appeal, no doubt, lies in the fact that his age paralleled in a large measure our own. ‘Part also of his appeal, indeed a greater part of it for some, lies in the ab- sorbing personal qualities re- vealed in his autobiography. The Confessions of St. Augustine. One way or another, as a man passionately seeking happiness, as a thinker probing through the deepest problems of his time, as a spiritual leader inspiring hu- manity onward, Augustine is significant and he deserves our attention. It was in the little town of Tagaste in what is now the east- ern part of Algeria, on Novem- ber 13, 354, that Augustine was born. His father was a Pagan and his mother, Monica, a noble Christian woman. His life up to the age of 32 had about it that random, check- ered, indecisive quality which is common enough today among young people. It was a life characterized by many mistakes, many false starts ... a full, in- tense life in the sense that mod- ern novelists speak of fullness and intensity ... a life circled round by sensuality and excess. Not having been baptised as a boy and being influenced more by his father than his mother in his religious convictions, or 14 SAINTS FOR rather in his lack of them, he grew to adult life with a vague notion of God as a Great Some- one, but that was all. Showing rich promise early in his studie's, he was sent by his father through the schools of his native town, on then to Madaura, and finally to the uni- ~ versity city of Carthage. These were magic years for the ardent young Augustine. Literature, the theatre, and the arts, he found completely absorbing, and at all of them he was making his mark. He was making his mark at something else, how- ever, which not only broke his mother’s heart but which came perilously close to breaking his own. Like many another stu- dent before his time and many a student since, he listened too long to the siren song of pleasure. He thought he had made an amazing discovery and that dis- covery was sex, so he set out to exploit it to the fullest ex- tent. From passion to excess he went ... no use disguising the fact, because in his own ac- count of it he is most frank. Yet the tragic part of this per- iod of his life was not that he had abandoned virtue, but worse still, he had ceased to think he was doing wrong. He had lost THE TIMES all concept of sin. Of this per- iod in his student days he wrote later that ‘‘the greatest shame was to feel ashamed.” It is the popular fashion to picture Augustine as the hand- some African, the darling of so- ciety in Carthage and in Rome, strikingly personable ... a young man of great charm, easy, facile^ persuasive in speech and giver to excesses. This is the pop* ular picture ... by all accounts a true one and one that has its appeal. But too many people have stopped with that picture as far as Augustine is concerned. Yet if this were all there were to him we should hardly be speaking of him today. For in the past there have been many young men rich in the same gifts which Augustine had ,who squandered them on the pleas- ures of the world, and today they are unknown. But here, now in November,1945, we are speak-^ ing of Augustine and he has ^ meaning for us. Why? Well, like the prodigal son in the par- able of Christ, having wasted his substance, he came to him- self and at great cost to his pride returned to his Father’s house. No one can read the story of Augustine’s life and fail to be impressed by the vigor and the ST. AUGUSTINE—A WARNING FROM THE PAST 15 courage with which he took up one intellectual position after another, each in its turn dis- illusioning and yet not crushing him. In the end, beaten down by the very demands of truth ^ itself, held back only by the powerful hold which his senses had upon him, he came face to face with that decision which many a man in our day has had to face: Shall I give up these pleasures of sense, shall I never know them again, shall I aban- don my way of life to .follow this sterner, harder, more dif- ficult way? Here was the stick- ing point for Augustine. Wres- tling with his decision, he tells in his Confessions how the nursery rhyme of a little child, ‘'Take up and read, take up and read,’’ captured his attention. Taking the Scripture he began to read and his eyes fell upon that text of St. Paul: “Not in revelry and drunkenness, not in debauchery and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and as for the fiesh, take no thought for its lusts.” {Romans 13: 13-14). That was all; but that was enough. Across 300 years Paul had spoken to Augustine and Augustine heard him. Today Augustine speaks with Paul’s words and they bear for us the same freight of rich meaning that they did for him in the fifth century. Only when man has put on the Lord Jesus Christ has he any adequate protection against the world’s slow stain. The world is forever holding up as romantic those who get bog- ged in the mire of pleasure, those who are too weak to ad- mit their guilt ; and yet such peo- ple are never happy. There is little romance in their lives. The saints, however, Augustine and Paul and many more, are witness,es to the fact that no man can be happy while he serves in the courts of pleasure. He can only be happy when he comes to grip with and con- quers his lower nature, when he denies himself and puts on the Lord Jesus Christ. In a larger sense, larger than the purely personal aspects of Augustine’s life, he has a great meaning for our time. The prob- lems he faced are substantially the same problems which severe- ly test us today . . . barbarism on the outside, refined mater- ialism and paganism within . . . each weakening society, each making it possible for society to come crashing down in ruin and desolation. I 16 SAINTS FOR THE TIMES Even as Augustine wrote, the bell was already tolling for the world in which he lived because it had lost all concept of spirit- ual things. Even as he wrote the Roman Empire was break- ing up. The barbarian was rac- ing through Italy, pillaging and laying waste to everything. He was threatening to come across the Mediterranean, and indeed before Augustine's death he did come; and within a short time after his death, there was little he had not conquered. Facing all this danger, what were the men of Augustine's time con- cerned with? In a memorable passage from his great work. The City of God, we are given an insight into the pleasure- drunk minds of that time : “They do not trouble," writes Augus- tine, “about the moral degrada- tion of the Empire. All that they ask is that it should be prosperous and secure. ‘What concerns us,' they say, ‘is that everyone should be able to in- crease his wealth so that he can afford a lavish expenditure and can keep the weak in subjection. Let the laws protect the rights of property and let them leave man's morals alone . . . Let there be gorgeous palaces and sump- tuous banquets where anybody can play and drink and gorge himself and be dissipated by day or night as much as he pleas- es or is able. Let the noise of dancing be everywhere and let the theatres resound with lewd merriment and with every kind of cruel and vicious pleasure. Let the man who dislikes these pleasures be regarded as a pub- lic enemy and if he tries to in- terfere with them, let the mob hound him to death.' " Does not all this have about it a modern ring? Has not our society been doing and saying pretty much the same thing? As our boys fought the barbar- ian on the outside, was our con- duct at home reflecting the so- briety of men and women who knew that a bell was tolling for them? As our young men fought in far-off lands to keep decency alive in the world, were our homes being rededicated to those national ideals which made Am- erica great and strong, or were they rather subjected to a ter- rible desecration and mockery? These are questions we might well meditate upon because our answers to them will determine how alive we are to the danger threatening not only our nation- al life but the very world in which we live. ST. AUGUSTINE—A WARNING FROM THE PAST 17 There is one great lesson which Augustine can teach us today. It is a lesson re-enforced by 1500 years of history, and it is to the effect that man can boast of his material achieve- ments and scientific advances but it will avail him nothing if he abandons the things of the spirit. At the close of the bloodiest war in history this les- son of Augustine was strikingly pointed up by the American General who warned that: “We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some great and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theolog- ical and involves a spiritual re- crudescence and improvement of human character that will syn- chronize with our almost match- less advance in science, art, lit- erature and all material and cultural development of the past 2,000 years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.” Let us remember that. The only chance of survival that our world has is in a complete dedi- cation to the things of the spirit. If our world does not accept this fact, if it chooses to ignore the lesson Augustine teaches us from history it will know that same darkness, that same ruin, that same chaos which came up- on the fifth century. That century thought Augus- tine was an alarmist. It thought he was vreaching too much, and yet, today, where are the mon- uments of that century? Where are the theatres that seemed so important, that engaged so much of the time and talents of the playwrights of that time? Where "are the schools and lecture halls ? Where even are the great cities and towns? They are gone. All of them. And alone of all the glory of that time, Augustine abides. He abides because he bore testi- mony to the things of the spirit. He realized that that society was weak whose only strength was in its force of arms. He real- ized that that society was al- ready doomed wherein God was merely a vague Someone and not a monitor and guide for all hu- man conduct. He realized that “unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keep- eth it.” That Roman world which Augustine saw approach its end, was a world in which ma- terialism and paganism were dy- ing. They had run their course. They had drained society of its 18 SAINTS FOR THE TIMES life blood.^ Barbarism triumphed, but only for a while. A new society, strong and full, began to form on the ruins of the old . . . and that society was in large measure indebted to the great Augustine for its dynamic con- cepts. From across the grave he could watch, as it prospered, a society of men who were hum- ble enough and wise enough to build their cities, their laws, and their culture around God. Today we can hope and pray that what is dying before us are not the ideas of Augustine, but rather the ideas of a pagan and materialistic society. We hope that within our ranks now, the spirit of this noble Doctor of the Church will be recreated, for we badly need the vigor and strength of all his utterances; and above all we need his intercession, for of all men he most clearly un- derstands that in our personal life, and then in that larger life of our community, we must have God or we shall have chaos. We can pray now as he prayed over 15 centuries ago: ‘"0 Lord our God: under the shadow of Thy wings, let us hope! 'Thou wilt support us both when . little, and even to grey hairs.. When our strength is of Thee it is strength . . . but when our own, it is a feebleness. We return unto Thee, 0 Lord, that from their weariness our souls may towards Thee rise, leaning on the things Thou has created and passing on to Thy- self, who wonderfully has made them. With Thee is refresh- ment and true strength. Amen.’^ ST, THOMAS AQUINAS—THE STRATEGY OF TRUTH Address Given On November 11, 1945 There is an old proverb to the effect that the more things change, the more they are still the same. Now our age is one essentially characterized by change, at least in certain as- pects—^thus there is very little similarity between the mechani- cal and material aspects of our age and, that of fifty years ago. But if we can judge by the ques- tions which are being asked to- day on every side, our age is not greatly different from those which have gone on before us. See the questions that are being asked: Is there a God? And if so, what is His influence upon our lives, our politics, thinking, business, and education? What is man? Is he animal, angel, or both? What is his place in the universe, and, indeed, what is the universe itself? No small ques- tions, these. Constantly being asked, they demand answers. An age that asks itself such ques- tions is an age that can with profit make the acquaintance of St. Thomas Aquinas. He has the answers and his answers will not disappoint, for he has been sup- plying men with hope and help for almost seven centuries. St. Thomas, you see, lived in the thirteenth century. That was Europe's springtime, when the very air was intoxicating and new life was stirring on every side. It was an age of ideas and remarkable intellectual activity —a colorful time, too, full of pageantry and chivalry. There were, of course, rascals and dul- lards in that far-off time, but they were rascals and dullards who were kept in their place. They did not occupy the seats of learning, nor did they pass the sentries of wisdom with stolen signs and gain entrance into the citadel of truth. No matter how you look at the thirteenth cen- tury, you cannot be bored with it. You cannot be uninterested in an age which sends its youth singing across the whole of Eur- ope, fired with a tremendous love of learning and a passionate quest for truth. It was that kind of century into which Thomas Aquinas was" born, and he was no stranger in it. For, from his earliest days. 20 SAINTS FOR THE TIMES he gave evidence of the keenest intelligence and the greatest en- thusiasm for study. A high-born lad, related to the Emperor Bar- barosa — the son himself of a Count—court life never had the slightest appeal for him. Books were his only passion and the life of a friar so strongly ap- pealed to him that he ran away from home and sought to become a Dominican. His parents, in- censed at what they considered a harum-scarum action, demand- ed that he be sent home. This failing, Thomas was kidnapped by his brothers and locked up in a castle for two years in the hope that he would give up his idea of becoming a friar. But after his period of imprisonment, he still longed to become a Domini- can and at the express command of the Holy Father himself, his family was forbidden to inter- fere with that desire. It is interesting today to re- call the places where Thomas Aquinas made his studies. There was first of all Monte Cassino, that wonderful Benedictine cen- ter of learning which served Europe so well for fifteen hun- dred years and which today is only a huge pile of rubble, a tri- bute to twentieth century bomb- ing. Then there was Naples where he continued his studies — the same Naples which today is gutted, and which feels so heav- ily the hand of war. At Rome too, happily spared this time, Aquinas studied. Then on to Paris, spared also today but sick and in no way filled with that eagerness which characterized it and made it wonderful in the days when Thomas and thous- ands of young people came to study at its schools. After Paris, he came under the influence of the great St. Albertus Magnus at Cologne, the same Cologne whose Cathedral—some say the loveliest in Christendom—stands today in the midst of ruin, a ter- rible witness to war and the only link between that unhappy city and the time of Aquinas. It may be that in this litany of ruined and broken towns which is recited in connection with the name and studies of Thomas Aquinas, the lesson is clear enough. That Europe which has chosen to set expediency in place of truth is a Europe which has chosen the wrong strategy — a Europe which has plotted its own destruction and charted its own course to defeat. Gone this long time from its great centers of learning has been that noble singleness of purpose which characterized it during the days of Aquinas. It has sought to en- ST. THOMAS AGUINAS—THE STRATEGY OF TRUTH 21 joy the heritage and richness of its past without paying the taxes which that inheritance demands. If Europe, indeed if our world, is to be saved, it must change its strategy; and from Thomas Aquinas it can learn the only strategy that is worth following. It is the strategy of truth. The value of truth as a strategy lies in its constancy and durability. It will not play man false nor will it desert him with the pas- sage of time. Truth has no par- ticular day. It applies every time and always. It is the only thing we can believe permanently be- cause it will neither deceive nor let us down. Fashions of thought have their day and they pass. Within the last fifty years, see how many of these fashions have come and gone, each one in its first ap- pearance having that attractive quality which men mistook for the reality of truth. And as swiftly as they made their ap- pearance, as swiftly have they disappeared. The only mark of their ever having been in our midst is the bitterness and dis- illusionment they have left be- hind in the human heart. With truth it is different. Time takes nothing away from it. In fact, time is on the side of truth. Upon those who espouse her cause she bestows an immortality. Thomas Aquinas was deeply devoted to truth and he raised an enduring monument to her in the master work of his life—his Summa Theologica. The complete edition of that Summa has been burned on more than one occasion and it has been al- lowed to gather dust in many libraries. Yet, because it was conceived in truth and dedicated to truth, neither fire nor dust can keep its message from those who desire to know in the larg- est possible terms what life is about. So many writers and thinkers today are concerned with man only in that interval of time be- tween the cradle and the grave. Thomas took no such restricted view. He saw man always in terms of God, .and so before he would consider man, he felt it only natural to consider God. Truth for Aquinas begins and ends with God. Thus in the vast comprehensive view of life which is his Summa, he starts out with what the human reason—unaided by any revelation—can learn for itself about God. This certainly is an ideal starting point for it makes no great demands upon any reader. It doesn^t'^resup- pose that the reader is Christian, Jew, or unbeliever. Reason is 22 SAINTS FOR common to all human beings and it is on that common ground that Thomas erects the great edifice to truth which is his Summa, After giving his reasons for the existence of God, and they are the classic ones, he holds before his readers the vision of the universe coming from God and ruled by God—a universe of many diiferent, yet interdepend- ent, beings. He sees man in the universe, not as the captain of his fate or the master of his soul, but as creature of God, en- dowed with free will, helped by God’s grace, and desperately needing that help in his struggle against a lower nature which would keep him ever from realiz- ing his destiny. He sees this creature, man, hurt by sin, dis- illusioned by failure, but won- drously ennobled by the example of God Himself who came upon this earth in a point of time, took upon Himself human nature and dignified it in the taking, suffered and died so that man might from the infinite merits of that action achieve the full measure of the dignity which is in him. In his Sumina, too, he shows man helped, not only by Christ but by the Church which Christ Established and from whose sacramental system man is able always to channel God’s THE TIMES grace into his life. Man is seen against the background of heav- en or hell and this, after all, is the only background against which any human life should be judged. Because man is free, Thomas shows, he can choose those habits and actions which will lead him to union with God and in this way anticipate on earth the life of heaven; or he can choose to destroy this union with God by indulging in sinful habits and actions and thus be- gin to live on this earth the life of hell. The Summa of Thomas Aquinas was never finished, but that does not prevent his pic- ture of life from being a com- plete one. We should say rather that his picture is integral with part relating to part so that the whole of it makes sense. The great contribution of Aquinas lay in his taking what was true from the Pagan philos- ophers and relating that truth to the truths he found in the Christian tradition and co-ordi- nating both into a splendid testa- ment to truth itself. Aquinas was never afraid of knowledge and there was a great deal of knowledge in his day. For they were not so ignorant in the thir- teenth century as the Sunday supplements of our press make ST. THOMAS AQUINAS—THE STRATEGY OF TRUTH 23 them out to be. They may have been wrong about the earth be- ing flat, but they were more right than we, for all our scientific sophistication, in their knowl- edge that the world, flat or round, came from God and was sustained by Him. Because there was a vast amount of knowledge in his time and be- cause it was disconnected, the more was the need for someone to take and relate the truths that were isolated in each sphere of study, so that they could make a cohesive, co-ordinated body of knowledge which would prove helpful to man in the solution of his problems. Aquinas did exactly that. He took truth wherever he found it and in- tegrated it with the truths he had at hand, so actually his Summa is a monument to truth. We can learn much from the technique of Thomas Aquinas today. There is a more desperate need in the twentieth century for an integration of truth than there was in the thirteenth cen- tury, because the isolated truths emerging from our scientific la- boratories threaten to crush man completely. The aspect of truth which en- gages the scientist is very often an aspect which does not con- cern the thinker at all. And there- in lies the possibility of destruc- tion for every one of us today because, over and above every aspect of knowledge, truth should be seen in all its grandeur. No single instrument, no single sec-^ tion of the orchestra, can do jus- tice to Beethoven’s Ninth Sym- phony. One needs strings, reeds, horns, bass, percussion instru- ments, human voices, and a con-