With reference to other things our opinion would be to let things remain as they are; because the common canonical law as it stands only obtains in a very few parts of Europe, and we may say that the church legislation, owing to the circumstances of the times, is in a transition state. When the Vatican Council opens again—and we hope our Holy Father Pope Leo XIII. may soon see fit to reopen it—many changes may take place in the legislation of the church. It will be time enough then for the American Church to adopt such legislation as will be conformable with the common law of the church.
Dr. Smith deserves high praise for his work, and our seminarians and clergy would do well to study his book as eminently useful and important, giving us quite an accurate idea of the common canonical law and of the particular legislation of the American Church.
The Book of Psalms. Translated from the Latin Vulgate, etc. London: Burns & Oates. 1878. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society Co.)
This small and neat edition of the Psalms is most welcome. With all respect we apply to it the words of an old English Catholic poet, Crashaw:
“Lo! here a little volume, but large book,
Much larger in itself than in its look.”
Cardinal Manning has written the preface, and the Psalms are enriched throughout with explanatory notes as the church requires for the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue.
The Psalter of David was among all classes of Christians, from the beginning, the favorite expression both of private and public devotions. The apostles themselves (Ephes. v. 19, Coloss. iii. 16) instructed the faithful in the use of these inspired canticles, and we learn from various passages in the writings of Tertullian, Augustine, Jerome, and Ven. Bede particularly, how familiar the early Christians must have been with them until the eighth century, when public or liturgical psalmody was left to the clergy exclusively. We hope that a taste for the reading of the Sacred Scriptures, and the devotional use of the Psalms especially, will increase—we had almost said will revive—among the laity.
Books for Summer Reading.
The Catholic Publication Society Company has just published quite a batch of very seasonable and interesting books. For those looking for summer reading nothing better could possibly be recommended than the graphic sketches of Italian life and manners, of scenery and monuments of faith and history, embodied in the charming Six Sunny Months, which ran as a serial in this magazine. Its gifted author, the writer of the House of Yorke, Grapes and Thorns, etc., needs no introduction to our readers. A companion volume to this is the Letters of a Young Irishwoman to her Sister, which excited so much interest and no little controversy while appearing in these pages. The pictures of French home-life and scenery, of French and Irish character, of thrilling contemporary events, given in these letters are to our thinking unsurpassed in unaffected grace and naïve simplicity, while the growing sadness of the end lifts what was intended to be the unpublished narrative of unassuming everyday existence to the heights of tragic pathos. Sir Thomas More carries us back into other days and weaves history into a powerful romance. The Trowel and the Cross, from the strong pen of Conrad von Bolanden, gives us the German social and political life of the day with a force and a truth and a deep philosophical insight that very few pens can command. Bolanden has Disraeli’s art of throwing the living problems of the day in social and political matters into interesting stories, with the saving gift, that Disraeli has not, of truth and right. Of lighter calibre, yet thoroughly charming and well adapted to while away the lazy summer hours, are Assunta Howard and Other Stories, Alba’s Dream (by the author of Are You My Wife?) and Other Stories, Stray Leaves from a Passing Life and Other Stories. Nothing better, in the way of light literature, than any or all of these books issues from the press, and nothing better can be done by Catholics who read at all than to read their own literature and support the efforts of those who devote their gifts exclusively to the Catholic cause.