World Crisis and the Catholic (review)

130 BOOK REVIEWS part, the same material each time. There is also, in my opm10n, much material not having any particular bearing on a philosophy of history in these chapters, no matter what might be its interest for the moral theologian (practical moral, that is). It makes for heavy reading especially when one is plowing through it hoping to find something that looks like a philosophy of history. But these are the flaws in the diamond. The book is the best presentation of the subject of a Christian philosophy of history to appear recently in the English-speaking world. Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D. C. JAMES R. CoFFEY, 0. P. World Crisis and the Catholic. A Symposium. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958. Pp. 245. $8.00. It is the reviewer's opinion that World Crisis and the Catholic is an important book. A symposium of monographs written for the most part by distinguished scholars in connection with the Second World Congress for the Lay Apostolate (Rome, October 5-13, 1957), the book covers the whole field of Catholic Action, in such a way as to present a reasonable apologetic for the Faith, as well as a source of inspiration to the reader. No educated Catholic, priest or layman, who would understand the problems posed by the present world crisis, can afford to miss reading these pages. As one of the contributors expresses it: "the years we are living through-even the very months-are those of our last chance! " (p. 126) Vittorino Veronese points out in his admirable preface that the book is written by men and women who differ in race, culture, language, profession, and, at times, opinion. There is no unity in the book save the common purpose of the writers to represent the Church as the last hope in an imperiled world. As Veronese declares in his preface: ". . . for the first time in history the world is beginning to feel and think itself as a world ... where only the Catholic-the Univeral-Church can satisfy man's deepest longing for unity." This hunger for world unity in the midst of a gigantic struggle for political power by nations with conflicting political ideals is the consequence of man's realization that the forces of destruction brought to light by the development of physical research and technology will mean either a better wor1d for all or no world at all. The first chapter on The Christian Statesman presents an interview given by Chancellor Adenauer of the German Federal Republic. Mr. Adenauer is fully aware of the role of the Christian both as an individual and a member of society. He believes that since the instrument for achieving political aims in the modern democratic state is the political party, Christians, if they want to suffuse public life with Christian principles, BOOK REVIEWS 131 must do so through the political party. In this he carries on the tradition of the old Centre party in pre-Hitler Germany. The idea of a political party founded on comomn religious sentiments finds acceptance in many places throughout the world, but the idea does not appeal to American Catholics. Our two _party system, thus far, has made unnecessary such political blocs in Congress. Respecting the threat of atomic warfare on the one hand and dictatorship and technocracy on the other, the Chancellor says that the general condition of the whole world demands a developing rapprochement between free peoples leading " to a world seeking genuine peace and a sound ordered way of life." (From an allocution of Pope Pius XII to a German delegation on the Pope's 80th birthday). Dr. Karl Stern, German-born convert from Judaism and an internationally recognized neuro-pathologist and psychiatrist, has succeeded in presenting Group Psychology in the Atomic Era in the Light of Christian Philosophy in language intelligible to the layman. Discussing briefly the destructiveness of nuclear energy and its terrifying implications, Dr. Stern sets up a parallel between the potential destructive energy of matter and the potential destructive forces in man's soul. "All this may sound gloomy," he remarks, " but it is no exaggeration to say that there exists an ocean of hostility and, if...