Brief Notices

BRIEF NOTICES Speaking of How to Pray. By MARY PERKINS. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1944. Pp. ~76. $~.75. Certainly we must welcome any book that really helps us to pray; such is the latest book of Miss Perkins. She has accomplished this end, not so much by telling us what prayer is, but rather by pointing out the need for prayer and giving us, in generous quotations from the liturgy, the matter for prayer. Her explanation of prayer comes rather late in the volume; an earlier introduction of this would have been helpful to most readers. Though she might be excused from any explicit discussion of the important distinctions between the prayer of petition and meditative or contemplative prayer, a firmer grasp of these distinctions in her own mind would have added to the value of the work. In an otherwise extraordinarily accurate doctrinal introduction, there is one serious theological slip. The author is discussing the Incarnation in relation to our Redemption. She points out that God might have redeemed us in many ways: "Yet He chose, in His infinite Love, to make a human nature capable of satisfying His Justice, repaying the debts of mankind; capable of loving Him with a Love so great that it would undo the wrong done to His Love by all sin; capable of meriting, for all mankind, the life of grace and glory and everything necessary to achieve that life in its fullness ; capable of giving that life of grace to all mankind" (p. 41). Not even God could make such a human nature; even the human nature of Christ had no such capabilities; all that Miss Perkins attributes to Christ's human nature must be attributed to grace. It is true that without human nature, Christ could not have accomplished all these things for us, but it is not the principle of the accomplishment. The Bond of Peace. By MICHAEL KENT. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1945. Pp. 186. $~.00. Despite the assertion of the publisher's blurb to the contrary, this is a work of apologetics, one of the most mature works to have appeared in recent years from an American pen. The author has chosen a rather simple device; he has chosen at random three history text-books by Non-Catholic authors, selected from them passages about the medieval world, the Lutheran reform, the gradual disintegration of European culture since the reform and the prospects for the future. The.se passages are given in an Appendix. The text of the work itself is a brilliant exploitation of the admissions that these rather anti-Catholic historians had to make. 289 290 BRIEF NOTICES The author's first work was a novel, The Mass of Brother Michel; this present volume is thoroughly factual, but as gripping as a novel. In fact it rises to a climax which is as startling as the solution to a mystery story; it would be unjust to the author to reveal it. We can say that we agree with it whole-heartedly. The Bone and the Star. By DoROTHY DoNNELLY. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1944. Pp. 205. $2.25. This is another adult piece of apologetic literature. Miss Donnelly has been criticized for the difficulty of the matter, especially in the first part. However, there are any number of bright young.. Catholics who read Frazer, Wundt, Freud, and other modern writers; for them the present book should not be too difficult. The author has given in the first part of her work a faithful account of the world and human development in modern terms. The data of ethnology and anthropology are carefully expounded. Having presented the usual picture, she goes back to the biblical account and explains the same data from the standpoint of Genesis. She makes no dogmatic assertions; she simply manifests the fact that the Bible can more rationally account for the known facts about human development. Her work is a satisfactory refutation of the Freudian explanation, for it shows that Freud had to invent any number of myths to explain the known: facts, while the facts can be easily explained in terms of Paradise and the Fall. Medieval Studies: Volume Vl-1944. Toronto, Canada: Pontifical...