INTELLECTUAL LIFE AT LOW EBB?
By Fr. MICHAEL HOLLINGS
Assistant Chaplain to London University Catholic Chaplaincy " WE English Catholics are not playing our due part in the intellectual life of the Church as a whole, and are not doing what, by sound learn ing, we might be doing towards the conversion of
our own country.
"We have to ask ourselves whether or not the policy of 'quick returns' is ultimately the best for the promotion of God's cause."
These important questions were raised by the Abbot of Downside in a paper asking
" Where are the Sacred Sciences?" in which he pointed out the terrible poverty of the Catholic Church not only in Biblical Studies, but also in dogmatic theology and other fields.
The Abbot pointed out that the remedy for this unsatisfactory situation was our will to find the remedy and to pay its price, which was partly monetary, when so much was absorbed in primary and secondary education.
SCHOLARSHIP
The Abbot's paper was read at the first Conference on Catholic Higher Education at St. Mary's Training College. Strawberry Hill, this week.
The meeting was attended by 150 representatives, all of whom were closely associated with education, either in the Universities themselves, or in seminaries and teachers' training colleges, the Hierarchy were represented by the Archbishop of Liverpool. and the Bishops of Menevia. Salford arid Leeds. There were twelve University Chaplains. Dons and lecturers came from the older Universities as well as from the newer, from as far afield as Oxford. Aberdeen, Georgetown. U.S.A., and Dublin.
Continuing the same theme. Professor the Rev. David Knowles of Cambridge lamented the paucity of development in Catholic Historical Scholarship. when there can be no doubt that the great need in the field of history is for more Catholics and priests competent to' fill a Rost and take their place alongside non-Catholics in the academic world.
" One could wish, now that universities are springing up like asparagus in May '. that there was in this country some institute of the quaFtv of the Pontifical Institute at Toronto.
" A learned clergy. or at least a
Continued on page 8, col. S.