Irish Jesuit Province

Gabriel's Ave and Other Religious Plays by F. H. DrinkwaterReview by: G. F.The Irish Monthly, Vol. 64, No. 758 (Aug., 1936), pp. 564-565Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20513989 .

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564 THE IRISH MON 'lHIL Y

a serious peril in Western Europe. For it has liberated from the outworn ideology of Marxism the quintessence of Bolshevism, which is the abso lute rule of a party, controlling and moulding the entire life of a people by a skilful combination of terrorism and propaganda. And it professes to have done so in the defence o-f European traditions. This penetrating study (translated by E. I. Watkin) offers profitable reading to all students of politics. It is divided into six sections: " The Controversy About Bolshe vism," " Lenin's Bolshevik State,"" Russian Marxianism, German National Socialism," " Hitler's State," " National Socialism versus Bolshevism," " The World Menace ". L. DE V.

Gabriel's Ave and other religious plays by Rev. F. H. Drilnkwater. (Burns, Oates & Washbourne, Ltd. 5/-.)

Will the good nuns and the hardworking teachers who write their tired theatrical friends asking them to recommend some good religious plays for junior pupils, please order a copy of this book? If they do they will find all they want written by a man whose need was their need, but whose interest and industry was a little greater than their own. Needing plays,

Fr. Drinkwater wrote them. Perhaps he had no theatrical friends. Perhaps they were too tired to help him. One thing Fr. Drinkwater did not lack, and that was a keen interest in his job. It is an interest which immediately stamps him as a man of the theatre. Read his stage directions (all of 'em).

Read this one: " For practical purposes the only thing needed is a large gateway in the back-centre of the stage, with a curtain, divided but closed, hanging down in place of gates, and three steps or more leading up to it."

And tnis. " N.B.-The player who represents Our Lady should be chosen for deep and tranquil personality rather than for a conventionally Madonna like cast of features. In Gabriel the chief requisite will be a clear pleasant voice." And so on, ad good theatre via commonsense. If you happen to be a playwright yourself, turn to page 34. Read the excellent directions given at the close of his little play of " The Presentation in the Temple." Then read what follows them. " N.B.- lf the above is felt to be a weak ending, etc." In assuring Fr. Drinkwater that his ending of the scene is far from weak (it is the nearest dranmatically perfect ending he could pos sibly have) I would like to commend to others (and to myself) the necessity for working in that spirit of humility, particularly in the Theatre. That coupled with the daring egotism of doing things for oneself, as Father

Drinkwater has done, and sparing no pains in the pursuit of technique (realising that piety without technique is simply piety) is the spirit from

which a great art will spring.

Father Drinkwater plays may be purchased separately (at 6d. each) but

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BOOK REVIEWS 505

this volume of his is one for which a place should he found on the work-shelf of every convent and school. G. F.

Church and State. Papers read at the Summer School of Catholic Studies, held at Cambridge, 27th July to 6th August, 1985. (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, Ltd. 7/6.)

One of the marks of the anticlerical, apart friom his Oranige obstinacy, is the cast-iron conviction that in affairs of State the Church is always

wrong: and that even when she is right, she is acting imprudently. He balances Papal Infallibility with ecclesiastical errancy. To their Lordships, the Bishops, he grants no shred of knowledge on economics or politics, he having garnered his plenitude of ideas from those undefiled fouintains, the newspapers, or from a few books. It is assumed, of course, that their Lordships never read a book save tol have it banned. For the anticlerical, this is the solution of the relations of Church and State. Another solution is to go to the other extreme where the clergy govern temporal affairs.

Neither solution has been unknown in history, as any reader may discover for himself by reading the first part of the book under review. The excel lent historical section, comprising eight papers of the total fifteen, covers time from the days of the pagan emperors of Rome to our own day. It seems, on reading in these pages, that a wheel spins and hiistory returns as to a starting place; fromi the, deified Casarism that made Rome a Babylon to the Cwsarian deity of National Socialism that keeps fear in Europe.

The monstrous growing power of the State runs like a hidden theme both through the historical and the (loctrinal papers of this book. Not always is the distinction between State and society renmembered 1y the writers and it leads to some confusions. For in the totalitarian State which they condemn, State and nation (society) are identified.

With such States which tend towards totalitarianism, the Church acts warily and with a certain amount of diplomatic success. " Catholicism

to-day," Father Johnson says, " exerts a greater influence on European politics than at any period since the Thirty Years' War." T'his influence has been directed in a large degree towardls promoting into practice the principles on which right government must stand or it fall. These prin ciples, contained in the Natural Law and in the deposit of the Faith, are as necessary to true government, to the validity of its authority, as air is to an animal. On this point, Authority and the Moral Order, the paper by Mr. H. Outram Evennett, M.A., is worthy of analysis and study in company with Mr. Eppstein's The Totalitarian State. One declares the

doctrine, and the other describes the perversion to which that doctrine

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