Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/208

 the laity are coerced into literary apathy, and consequently the stimulus to study is absent.

About two years ago the cardinal realised that his priests were not au courant, and that they were really unable to bring themselves adequately in touch with modern thought, so he instituted a kind of intellectual committee to sit upon modern questions, and report to the majority. A dozen of the better-informed London priests constituted it, and they met occasionally to discuss, especially social questions and the Biblical question. I remember procuring a large amount of socialistic literature for certain members who wished to study both sides. When the members of this new Areopagus had come to a few decisions, they were to enlighten their less studious or less leisured brethren by a series of small books: the books have not yet appeared. The fact that the proposed writers (to my knowledge) dare not print their true ideas on the above problems at present may not be unconnected with the delay. A Jesuit writer, about the same time, began a series of explanatory and very pedagogical articles on the critical question in the 'Tablet,' but he was soon cut to pieces by other Catholic writers. The Jesuits have also published a series of volumes of scholastic philosophy in English. The student will find in them an acquaintance with science and modern philosophy which is rarely found in the scholastic metaphysician. Unfortunately they are little better than a translation of the discarded Latin