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PAGE 4—THE BULLETIN, January 23, 1960 JOSEPH BRE1G DAN'L AND THE DEVIL Just about the easiest way of getting your name in the papers nowadays is to say something about whether or not you think the United States of America is hale and hearty enough to withstand the shock of fac ing the hide ous prospect that a presi dent might some day be elected who is (shudder) a Catholic. Make it Roman Catholic, and shudder twice. How stands the Union? Thus might old Dan’l Webster, he who was not afraid of the Devil himself, inquire in an oratorical roar, reverberating in a sonic boom from Maine (so goes the nation) to California (so goes the population). How stands the nation? Rock-ribbed or not? Well, she stands in peril dire, if we can believe those whose hair turns whiter than the White House at the thought of its ever being occupied by a man who goes to Mass on Sundays and maybe even kneels down now and then to pray the Rosary. CONGRESS, it appears, does not matter a fig. Nobody spreads the alarm like Paul Revere, or loads his musket like a Minute Man, when a Catholic, or many Catholics, is (or are) elected to the House or the Senate. Congress, one gath ers, could be as Catholic as the College of Cardinals, and no body would so much as look up from the sports page. The Supreme Court is equal ly of little consequence. No new Boston Tea parties have been held, even though for genera tions it has been customary to have at least one Catholic sit ting with the other justices to interpret the Constitution, and sometimes to overrule Congress and the president too. How stands the Union? Nobody, apparently, so much as notices that many of the gov ernors of the 50 states are Catholics, and many of the mayors of cities, and countless councilmen and members of the state legislatures. INDEED, YOU COULD walk through many a state capitol, and city hall, and county build ing and find that half or more of the men and women who tend to the affairs of govern ment are Catholics. Roman Catholics. The police depart ments, the national guards, the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force are plain polluted (if my fellow-Catholics will excuse the word) with them. And still there are no terrifying head lines in the newspapers,. or blood-chilling articles in the magazines, about the nation standing on the brink of de struction for such reasons. Somehow, a Catholic in the presidency is another matter. A horrifying matter. At least, it is so in the eyes of a few Americans who are in position to get their statements widely publicized. Let us not name any of them. Let us chip no chips off the rock-ribbed harmony of the Union. They are frightened, or they profess to be; and when a man is frightened, he may sometimes say things which are best laid not to him, but to his fright, and then forgotten. As a Catholic, yes a Roman Catholic, I for one do not par ticularly care whether I live to see a Catholic in the White House. I DECLINE to vote along re ligious lines. I refuse to per vert the democratic process. I shrink from behaviour so un- American. But I have a sug gestion. Possibly the frightened ones are afraid merely of change. So maybe we ought to amend the Constitution, just for a short time, to allow us to send a Ro man Catholic to the White House for, say, one week, and then'a Jew for one week also. Then we could all go back to work and stop jittering and ar guing and pointing with alarm. I think old Dan’l Webster would chuckle, and say we had outfoxed the Devil once more. Theology For The Layman (By F. J. Sheed) Column 47 THE CHURCH IS HOLY (1) With the mark of Holiness as with others, we must distin guish between the outward showing—visible to anyone who cares to look and liable to grow greater or less—and the inner char acteristic, visible to the eye of faith and belonging to the Church’s very essence, from the first moment of her existence and never varying. In this profounder sense the holiness of the Church is simply the holiness of Christ. It is His Church, made by Him as the bearer of holiness to men. Ev ery member, in contact with Him, has available to him a fount of holiness; there is no limit save our own will to re ceive what He has to give. There is no growth and, of course, no diminishing. If every one of her members were in a state of grace at a given mo ment, the Church’s holiness would be no greater; if we were all in mortal sin together, it would be no less. In other words the holiness of the Church is not the sum total of the holiness of all her members; any more than the wetness of rain is measured by the wetness of all those who have ventured out in it. If the whole popula tion goes out and gets drenched, the rain is no wetter; if every one stays indoors, the rain is no less wet. Rain is wet because it is rain, whether or not men ex pose themselves to it. The Church is Holy because it is Christ living on in the world. It is the cause of the holiness of its members, but is not measured by their response. But with the mark, we find ^Continued on Page 5) Question ■" Box By David Liptak Q. I grant that our churches could not possibly exist unless they took up collections. But I do wish that the subject of col lections would cease to be dis cussed from the pulpit. It's so distasteful, especially when the sermon happens to manifest the very antithesis of tact. What about the early Church? Ser mons on Church support were not necessary then, were they? At least they couldn't have been so strongly worded. I sub mit that practically every Catholic is well aware of his obligation to give to the Church and hence needn't bo reminded of it, not even during the read ing of the annual report. Or am I all wrong? A. Probably niany a sermon on Church support could be more tactfully put. If strong words are used, however, it is usually for the benefit of the scores of slackers who. accept it or not, definitely do make up a sizeable percentage of par ishioners in the majority of parishes. And while severe re minders may seem disturbing to the conscientious individual who does his part, they must be resorted to at certain times in order to wake up both those who perenially neglect, through their own fault, to give any thing at all to their church; and those who do contribute a little, but considerably less than their fair share. Even if everyone realized and tried to fulfil his obligation in this matter, the subject of Church support would still be a most fitting one for discus sion in the pulpit. For such dis cussion could at least serve to help parishioners renew proper motivations, which should ulti mately be, of course, love of God and a sincere Desire to fur ther His greater honor and glo ry. As regards sermons about Church support in the primitive days of Christianity, several references can be found both in the pages of the New Testa ment and in the works of the Fathers and early historians. St. Paul himself mentions the sub ject. Thus, too, St. Cyprian, who was bishop of Carthage in the third century, thought it necessary to issue the following warning to certain affluent per- (Continued on Page 5) Jottings ... (By BARBARA C. JENCKS) “It is the yesterdays that I love. Do you ever feel more at home in the past than the pres ent?” Cardinal Newman in Second Spring • HISTORIANS, EDITORS, statesmen, analysts, economists are all busily recording events of the fabulous-fifty decade. The weighty world problems of the past ten years, the grave eco nomic dangers, the wars, the floods, the famines, the great men who walked these years are being immortalized in the records. To most of us the past ten years are punctuated and engraved with the events which never made the front page of the newspaper and never caused world crisis. We move as actors on a stage against the backdrop of these major happenings of the decade. We are apt to look back to the yesterdays instead of ahead to the tomorrows or even this afternoon. As for me, I am sure that there will never be a more important decade in my life than the decade known as the fabulous fifties. I will remember the Korean War, the Communist terror, Senator Mc Carthy, the hurricanes and the fires but I will remember more the little human things which made the heart beat faster and the blood run quicker and the soul move to great heights. • BEGINNING the decade at the early twenties with a here and hereafter before me, the waters of baptism had hardly dried on my head. I became a voter but more important I be came a citizen and heir of heav en knowingly as a child of God. The gift of faith is never paid for outright. We die with the debt unpaid. Each day we pay something and we get some thing. These have been the most important years of my life be cause I have held the blueprint of faith before me and all things were added to it. Only because of this has my decade held meaning beyond the power to express. St. Thomas has said that we are wdiat we know. All things are mine that I have known. They come somersault ing out in no particular order as I go back in mind over these years. There have been fare wells to dear ones who have gone before and now wait and there have been new ones to take their place. In this period, I have the most important friendships of my life. A nun- friend once told me that every person we meet along the way should bring us closer to God. How many steps to the ladder of heaven? I have walked new paths with new people and done things I never dreamed I could do and suffered things I never thought the human heart could bear. I have dreamed dreams, been disappointed and begun again and I have seen more than ever why we must anchor all our actions and all our loves and all our works in God Who is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow. • WHEN I THINK of all the wonders of the world that have come to me in this past decade, I am overwhelmed with grati tude. I am not the slim young ster of 1950. I can no longer take the .stairs two at a time but I am still able to make it to the altar each day. I have no bank account or have made no material assets. My memories are treasures no man can take from me. I have nothing to show the world for these ten years and not half enough to show God. Doors have opened before me which I had never dared ap proach and turn the handle. The beauties of art, music, drama, poetry have enchanted me. These have indeed been the most important years of my life but I am a backward scholar and will never catch up. All the great minds of the world are ours if we but approach them Oh, the friends of this world and the other world and the world of letters which have fill ed my nights and days these past ten years! When these are measured, I am a millionnaire. I have come to know our Lady better, source of all wisdom. I have become closer friends with the saints Patrick, Augustine, Brigid and Bonaventure and Teresa of Avila in the decade. There was Dante, Plato, New man, Eliot, Beethoven, Mozart, Renoir, Picasso, Wolfe, Ber- How Do You Rate on Facts of Faith By Brian Cronin 1. Job, in the Old Testament, was noted for his: (a) Piety? (b) Wisdom? (c) Patience? (d) Strength? 2. Who is the patron saint of the Universal Church?: (a) St. Peter? (b) St. Joseph? (c) St. Paul? (d) St. Pius X? 3. To what religious order did St. Thomas Aquinas belong?: (a) The Jesuits? (b) The Dominicans? (c) The Francis cans? (d) The Benedictines? 4. The patroness of Mothers, St. Monica, was instrumental in the conversion of her son whose name was: (a) St. Augus tine? (b) St. Paul? (c) St. Ignatius of Loyola? (d) Fr. Isaac Hecker? 5. Which one of the apostles was called "The Just”?: (a) John? (b) James the Less? (c) Peter? (d) James the Greater? 6. What month of the year is dedicated to Mary, Queen of Martyrs?: (a) May? (b) July? (c) August? (d) September? 7. Name the archdiocese with the, largest population?: (a) Boston? (b) Chicago? (c) New York? (d) Philadelphia? 8. Who was the spy sent by Moses to Canaan?: (a) Caleb? (b) Delilah? (c) Jezabel? (d) Judah? Give yourself 10 marks for each correct answer below. Rating: 80—Excellent; 70—Very Good; 60—Good; 50—Fair Answers: 1 (c); 2 (b); 3 (b); 4 (a); 5 (b); 6 (d); 7 (b); 8 (a). SHARING OUR TREASURE "My Conversion Is A Miracle Of Grace," Says Psychiatrist By REV. JOHN A. O'BRIEN, Ph. D. (University of Notre Dame) _ ^ About one out of every three marriages at which a priest offi ciates today is a mixed mar riage. Though the Church does not encourage such unions, they offer a fertile field for conver- sions if the Catholic part ner sets a proper exam ple, lives his Faith, and prays con stantly that God will give the precious gift of faith to his spouse. This is illustrated in the conversion of Dr. Frederick J. P. Rosen heim, a gifted and brilliant psychiatrist in Natick, Mas sachusetts. “I was brought up in the Orthodox Jewish faith,” related Dr. Rosenheim, “by loving and saintly parents. In college I lost my faith and from then until the 13th year of my marriage I didn’t even believe in God. I had received my medical degree from Columbia University and then pursued further studies to become a psychoanalyst. “My colleagues and friends were largely agnostics and athe ists. The words of the Psalmist, ‘The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God,’ fitted to me a ‘T’. I had turned my back upon Him and had turned to evil. But God is good and His mercy reaches into the heavens. “He stretched out His hand and rescued me, not because I deserved it but because He loved me. He gave me the most wonderful girl in the world to love and marry, an Irish Cath olic. Born in Ireland, Gertrude Shanahan was in the United States only a year when we married. She not only loved me but prayed arid did penance for me. “She composed the following beautiful prayer which she and the children said every night: nanos, O’Casey—all have given me new thoughts and manners of expression. • IT WAS DURING this dec ade that I became a teacher and found a satisfaction that writing alone could never bring. I have had the privilege of bringing knowledge to others and influ encing personally instead of through the written word. I have walked the green path ways of Ireland and the sun baked roads of Rome and knelt where saints were martyred and prayed where Popes are buried and received the personal bles sing of a Vicar of Christ. I have visited shrines and met hosts of celebrities, some who became my friends. Places which were only names have become real to me. I have held more portion of the world’s beauty than I could dream possible. My cup runneth over in gratitude that these ten years have been filled with grace and beauty and thought and love and challenge. The seas that smash the Galilee breakwater, the sunsets inde scribable over Indiana skies, the Boston skyline at twilight, the college tower bathed in moonlight, the plane rides, the boat trips, the subway excur sions, the stimulus of idea ex change, the world that has en tered into my mind—and the friends who have entered my heart and the God who has en tered my soul in only ten years! ‘Good night, dear Jesus. Bless us and make us good children. God bless daddy. Help him to know just You, to love just You and to serve just You. God grant that some day he may learn to know, love and serve the family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Help him to persevere in his work and bless our happy home.’ “During World War I, I en listed. Shortly before overseas I was writing a letter to my wife. In the middle of it, sud denly, abruptly, without ever having even for a moment en tertained the thought, I told her to tell her pastor that I wanted to be baptized. That weekend I called on him in Belmont and told him that I believed every doctrine of the Catholic Faith. “Shortly afterwards I was bap tized and received our Eucharis tic Lord, with my wife kneeling at my side. God’s love flooded my soul and happiness filled my heart. Truly I was reborn. Through a miracle of grace God drew me into His outstretched arms. My wife’s prayers were answered and now our family is still more closely united by our common Faith. “My wife now sings a silent song of praise and love to God. Silent? Yes. Before my conver sion she sang with the most glorious voice I ever heard. She had studied under the great John McCormick and had won a medal at the London College of Music. She had sung fre quently, of course, in church. Immediately after my conver sion she lost that marvelous voice and has been unable to sing a note since. “Never has she expressed the least word of bitterness. A far greater sacrifice would she gladly have made for my con version. I ask God to bless and reWard her. She has fulfilled the glorious mission, bequethed by St. Patrick to the Irish, to capture souls for Christ. She had captured me and bound me, a willing prisoner, to Jesus Christ, my Lord and my King.” Father O’Brien will be grate ful to readers who know of any one who has won two or more converts if they will send the names and addresses of such per sons to him at Notre Dame Uni versity, Notre Dame, Indiana. ASKS PILGRIMAGE OF PEACE TO MONTE CASSINO PARIS, (Radio, N C) — France’s Marshal Alphonse Juin has called on all veterans, of the Battel of Monte Cassino to re turn there with him on a pil grimage of peace. Marshal Juin, who command ed the French troops in the World War II assault on the Ger man-held Benedictine abbey in Italy, said the pilgrimage will emphasize the desire of all men for the creation of a world or der based on peace and justice. Soldiers of 15 nations took part in the battle that raged around the heights where St. Benedict took refuge in the sixth century and continued his work of founding monasticism in the western world. The pilgrimage will take place on April 15. It has been organized by the Lamp of Brotherhood, an international organization devoted to peace. Books Hold Own Despite TV THE BACKDROP By JOHN C. O’BRIEN One of the assumptions that has won wide acceptance in re cent years is that Americans do not read books as much as they used to. Often we hear people say that the movies, television, ra dio and the a u t o m o bile have come to m o n o p o lize leisure time in this country to the point where there are no hours left for the perusal of a book. Our parents and our grandparents, so the story goes, were supposed to have been omnivorous readers of books, but we have time only for thumbing through a magazine or two a week and the break fast time scanning of newspaper headlines. BACKSEAT FOR TOBACCO Like many widely accepted assumptions, this one fails to stand up in the face of the cold statistics. The fact is, reports the Department of Commerce, that book sales have been mov ing steadily upward for the past decade, the very decade during which television is supposed to have taken command of our lives. And if more books are be ing sold, the assumption is that more books are being read. Book publishers’ sales in 1959 ran close to $1,200,000,000 and the forecast is that they will be in excess of $1,300,000,000 in 1960. This means that Ameri cans spent almost as much for books during the past year as they did for movies and tele vision sets combined. They spent more for books than for tobacco in all its forms. It may be objected that an in crease in dollar volume of book sales is not a reliable measure of the increase in book buying, because the price per book has risen so sharply in the last few years. But the statistics of the Department of Commerce show that the number of titles pub lished last year ran nearly 13 per cent ahead of the number published in 1958. In 1959, some 14,000 titles were channelled into the bookstores, a record high for the United States. As might be expected text books of all kinds accounted for a substantial percentage of the increase in book sales. Sales of this type of book have been ris ing at about the same rate as the increase in school enroll ment. Funds available under the National Defense Educational Act of 1958 for purchases of printed materials other than textbooks have given an addi tional stimulus to the educa tional market. But books of biography, his tory, religion, fine arts, fiction, medicine and science (other than textbooks) also have been running ahead. The two classes of books which have declined in sales are poetry and drama. Interest in the past seems to have been awakened among Americans, for books on his tory, including historical fiction, showed a greater sales increase than any other category except textbooks. PAPERBOUNDS ABOUND The most phenomenal growth in the publishing business in re' cent years has been the vast output of paperbounds. The issue of paperbounds is no long er limited to two or three pub lishing firms. Nearly every rep utable publisher now issues a series of paperbounds, many of them reprints of'the great books of the past. Hardbound trade books', how ever, have not been neglected. Hardbound fiction and non fiction, the kind of books that sell for from $3.95 to $7.50, sold better in 1959 than in the pre vious year. Publishers of books for adults reported that 1959 sales were running 23 per cent ahead, while publishers of books for juveniles reported an increase of 11 per cent. Not only are the domestic sales of books moving up but the export of books as well. Book exports in 1959, according to Department of Commerce data, were running 14 per cent ahead of exports in the previous year. Bibles, textbooks, diction aries and encyclopedias ac counted for a large percentage of the book exports. Fears of the publishers that rival claimants for the leisure of the American people were threatening to put them out of business, once were very real. But these fears have not been realized and the outlook for the publishers never was rosier, The statistics show that we are buying more books than ever before. Whether the quali ty of the output has kept pace with the quantity may be high ly debatable. Father Whartaa’a View fromtfce Rectory \\ The Wrong Mrs. Isaacson His wife came to him at the close of day, when the lamps were being lit and a feeling of peace lay pver the world. With cool fingers she caressed his forehead. Gently she took from him the volume of simple, heartfelt verses he had been > reading. Softly, her . warm lips close to his ear, she whispered: “I’ll wash and you dry.” Marriage is a serious business. If that were a Hollywood star in our example above, he’d probably walk out right past the pile of dirty dishes and into the divorce court. “Mental cruelty and incompatibility,” he’d tell the judge. The dishwashing problem is only one of the elements that make matrimony a serious busi ness. Marriage is certainly a solemn contract by which a man and a woman acquire the breathtaking privilege of co operating with God in bringing other human beings into the world. But - it’s also a contract by which a man and a woman agree to face together the dirty dishes and unpaid bills and baby screaming at 2 a. m. Because marriage is a con tract for men and women, not for little boys and girls, certain requirements must be met if the agreement is to bring hap piness. Or if it’s to be any con tract at all, for that matter. The nervous bridegroom, for instance, should make sure he has the right girl. If the bride blushing under that heavy veil is not the one he thinks she is, they’re not getting married at all. The most famous of mis taken identity is that of the wrong Mrs. Isaacson in the Book of Genesis. While Jacob, the son of Isaac, was fleeing from the wrath of his brother, Esau, he fell in love with his beautiful cousin, Re becca. Laban, the girl’s father, was no man to pass up a deal. He therefore agreed to give Re becca to Jacob in return for sev en years of work. This was be fore unions, of course. Jacob labored for seven years, and wedding bells finally rang. Jacob was happy at last—until he found out that his father-in- law had substituted his older daughter, Lia, for Rachel. It is to Jacob’s eternal credit that he accepted this trickery with a generous spirit. All he said to Laban was, in effect, “What’s up?” And a little more eternal credit goes to Jacob for accept ing Laban’s lame excuse. “It’s not the custom to give the younger girl in marriage,” said the old man. “But for another seven years of work, you can have Rachel too.” If only Jacob had been living a few thousand years later and was familiar with Church law. Not to mention that the girls were his cousins and that he would end up with two wives, Jacob would have a perfect an swer. “The laugh’s on you, Uncle Laban,” he could say. “Marriage is a free contract and there’s no contract if I say ‘I do’ to the wrong person.” And he’d be right; it was not a valid marriage. The incident illustrates the point that the marriage contract isn’t something a person falls into accidentally. If it’s an acci dent—if force or excessive fear or substantial error enter into it—it’s no contract. That doesn’t mean that Spotts- wood may sue for an annulment simply because his new bride isn’t all he expected her to be. Later he finds out that she had said she was a “healthy lion,” not a “wealthy scion.” He learns that she was called “Duchess” just for laughs. Too bad for Spottswood—but this kind of error doesn’t invalidate the contract. Force and violence make a true marriage impossible, though. If the bride’s father has a gun stuck in Eppington’s ribs, or if he pushes the reluctant bridegroom’s head up and down to signify his “I do”—Eppington can hardly be entering into a free contract. Even fear induced by threats might make the agreement in valid. This has nothing to do with the disease called Bride groom’s Knees, a knocking con dition which is normal in all members of the species at such a crucial time. We mean the ex cessive fear caused by such ex ternal things as blackmail, shot guns or over-demanding moth ers. Little Elwood might be one of those precocious tots who are only 11 but who walk, talk and smoke as if they were 21. But even if he somehow gets to the altar with another sixth-grader, it’s no marriage. Too young. Hiram emerges from the hills and is ensnared without having the slightest idea what mar riage is all about. Maybe he said “I do”—but he doesn’t. No contract. And Smedley, who every day bemoans his defeat at Waterloo, cannot enter into a marriage contract. An insane person is not free enough. These examples all demon strate that marriage is a con tract that must be made freely and knowingly only by those who know what they are doing. Our national scene presents a picture of remarriage and remarriage that could make us lose sight of the dignity of this great sacrament. Young couples looking forward to wedded bliss have to make the contract as human beings—not merely as animals of the opposite sex. The wrong attitude will make the dreams crumble quickly when the Mrs. says those inevi table words to the Mr.: “I’ll wash and you dry.” Russian In, Latin Out Of College SYRACUSE, N. Y„ (NC)—Le- Moyne College will introduce Russian language courses nexl fall, and drop its requiremenl that Latin must be studied foi a bachelor of arts degree, Fa ther Robert A. Mitchell, S.J. College dean, announced. Hullrtttt 416 8TH ST., AUGUSTA, GA. Published fortnightly by the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Georgia, Inc., with the Approbation of the Most Reverend Arch bishop-Bishop of Savannah, The Most Reverend Bishop of Atlanta and the Right Reverend Abbot Ordinary of Belmont. Subscription price $3.00 per year. Second class mail privileges authorized at Monroe, Georgia. Send notice of change of address to P. O. Box 320, Monroe, Georgia. REV. FRANCIS J. DONOHUE REV. R. DONALD KIERNAN Editor Savannah Edition Editor Atlanta Edition JOHN MARKWALTER Managing Editor Vol. 40 Saturday, January 23, 1960 No. 17 ASSOCIATION OFFICERS GEORGE GINGELL, Columbus President MRS. DAN HARRIS, Macon Vice-President TOM GRIFFIN. Atlanta Vice-President NICK CAMERIO, Macon _ Secretary JOHN T. BUCKLEY, Augusta Treasurer ALVIN M. McAULIFFE, Augusta Auditor JOHN MARKWALTER, Augusta Executive Secretary MISS CECILE FERRY, Augusta — Financial Secretary