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Tha Official Organ of the Catholic Laymen’s Association
of Georgia.
RICHARD REID, Editor.
Published Semi-Monthly by the Publicity Department
409 Herald Building. Auguata, Georgia.
Subscription Trice, $2.00 Per Year.
ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1921-1922.
I’. H. Rice, K. S. G., Augusta •President
Col. P. H. Callahan. Louisville, Ky Honorary Vice-President
J. J. Haverty, Atlanta First Vice-President
J. B. McCallum, Atlanta Secretary
Thomas S. Gray, Augusta ••••.: '-v'iwS
Richard Reid, Augusta •5 u ?]! c !j y n'roctUr
Miss Cecile C. Ferry, Augusta . ■■ Assistant Publicity Director
to man, the natural consequence of a philosophy built
on the two dominant notes of selfishness and de
spair.
The Papal Election.
By GEORGE BARNARD.
VOL. III. ,
MARCH 10, 1922.
NO. 4.
Entered •wsond elass matter June 15, 1921, at the Post
Office at Augusta, Ga., under Act of March, 1879. Accepted
for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section
1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized September 1, 1921.
Modern Paganism. «
Eighteen hundred years ago Marcus Aurelius, pa
gan philosopher, and persecutor of Christians, penned
in ancient Rome the pagan principle: “When the
chamber becomes too smoky, I will step out into the
open.” - «
We have progressed since then. It was left to a
Judge sitting on the Bench of the highest county court
in the Christian state of Georgia, not only to quote
Marcus Aurelius with approval and label his state
ment “one of the most beautiful thoughts and sound
est principles ever enunciated,” hut to actually extend
the old pagan doctrine. “The noblest thing a man can
do under certain circumstances is to take himself ont
of the world,” he is quoted as saying.
We yield to no one in our respect to the Courts,
but we must object to this statement from a Judge
on the Bench. To endorse suicide, not to say to
glorify it, it to deny the dominion of God over his
own creatures. For a public official to do so under
color of his officers to employ the State as a means
of inculcating paganism.
What would that same Jqdge think if a minister
of religion were to declare from the pulpit that our
system of jurisprudence is a fraud? Yet, that is what
he as a minister of jurisprudence says of religion;
lor if God has no dominion over His creatures, no
greater fraud than religion can be Imagined.
If we are to preserve inviolate the principle of
separate functions for Church and State, the State no
less than the Church must keep within its proper
sphere. There is no good in insisting on the duty of
rendering to Caesar what lielongs to Caesar unless we
recognize certain things as belonging to God. When a
Judge on, the Bench begin to lay down moral prin
ciples that are outside the law, he strikes at a fun
damental principle of human government, which is
written in our American Constitution and which we
like to think of as a distinctive contribution of our
country to the rest of the world.
Uy the Common Law which is the heritage of all
English speaking, peoples, suicide is a crime; excus
able in cases of insanity only, and under no circum
stances justified. To attempt it is criminal; to did
and abet it is criminal; and if teaching that it is “a
noble and beautiful thing” is not criminal, this is be
cause until in recent years , no such perversion was
ever taught anywhere in the Christian world.
The attempted glorification of suicide is a sur
vival of pagan civilization, when God was derided and
Man was held in such low esteem that a wooden
image set up in the street was accorded more res
pect than a mother with her child in her arms; when
there were a million slaves in the City of Rome and
their masters could kill them for a whim, or set them
to killing one-another for the sport of crowds; when
87,000 men and women regarded as the most cultured
on earth would sit in the Coliseum and turn “Thumbs
Down” on a fallen gladiator pleading for his life.
Human life was cheap then. In the days of that
Marcus Aurelius, with whose so-called philosophy a
Judge on the Bench would displace the Gospel of
\ Jesus Christ, a Roman noble once enteretained his
guests at dinner by having a slave killed and cut in
pieces and fed to the fishes in his artificial pools.
And because they followed the Meek and Gentle Savior,
Who did nothing hut good on earth, Who gave Him-
K self to redeem the world, Whose every word and deed
is a benediction to mankind -forever, because they
followed Him, that same Marcus Aurelius, Emperor
of Rome, who glorified in his defiance of God’s do
minion over man, ordered Christian men and women
put to death, and some of them were made into
living torches and set along the highways to illumine
Hie night.
he prevalence of suicide is the marie of,a de-
aifent civilization. When men and women begin to
show themselves too weak to face the consequences
ol their thoughts and deeds, they grow reckless of
< their thoughts and deeds, and thereby prove them
selves an unstable element in society. A nation that
las only such persons to look to for Us support has
n its race.
I? Unless we believe that man is created by God
j His own Image, the dignity of the human person
•Is away, and we ought logically to subscribe to the
|j|le scheme of pagan civilization, for that at least
I,consistent in its exhibition of man’s inhumanity
There is perhaps no single feature in history so
pronounced than the untiring efforts of the Papacy to
be free from the influence of political power. 'This
is evident not only in such notable episodes as the
imprisonment of Pope Pius VII by Napoleon or ^fhe
strife between Gregory VII and Henry IV of Ger
many, hut also in the constant vigilence of the Papacy
throughout the centuries to keep the election of the
Pope free from political dictation.
Despite this continual and increasingly successful
effort through the centuries, the political note fre
quently intruded itself in the great quantity of matter
published by the newspapers about the late Pope, Ben
edict XV. It was conspicuous in articles by special
correspondents. It was present, in a lesser degree, in
the Associated Press dispatches. It is perhaps natural
for the secular mind to take this view of a papal el
ection, and this very tendency, in times now happily
long passed, caused such an interference with papal
elections on the part of secular powers that it would
perhaps justify one who judges from those times
alone in thinking they were influenced, if not dom
inated, by the same spirit as ordinary elections.
When we reflect that among the 259 Popes who
have succeeded St. Peter in the Roman Sec, more than
thirty of them were martyrs and more than one,
hundred were imprisoned or exiled by the existing
powers, we can understand how political influence at,
limes dominated. The Emperors before Constantine
the Great did not greatly concern themselves about
the Pope. They merely in time put him to death.
During the first three centuries, all but one of the
thirty Popes were martyred. Constantine, being con
verted to Christianity, declared the pope free;__he
even withdrew his own court from Rome, started to
Milan and afterwards founded Constantinople, in or
der chiefly that Urn Church, with its head in Rome,
might be free from the political power.
Constantius, however, who was smitten with the
Arian heresy, under took to reestablish the ancient
pagan order in which the civil power dominated and
absorbed everything. He banished I.iberius and set
up a Pope of his own (Fciix II), and since that time
the attempts at interference on the part of Emperors
and Kings with the Qiurch’s liberty make a long and
dismal story. In the next century Emperor HonorioUs
on two separate occasions declared null a papal elec
tion and ordered a new one. TheodOric, the Ostro
goth, went so far even as to appoint a Pope (Felix III)
without any pretense at election, and after the Gothic
monarchy, the Byzantine Emperors provided by Im
perial Decree that all papal elections should he con
firmed from Constantinople.
With the sixth century, however, began the decline
both of the Byzantine power and the Arian hereby,
and from the sixth until the beginning of the tenth
century the election of the.Roman Pontiff was accord^
ing to ecclesiastical law and free from political power.
Following the collapse of the Carlovingian Empire,
Otto I, compelled the Romans to take oath that they
would never elect a Pope without his or his son’s con
sent and from this time (903) until the historic drama
played out at Conossa between Hildebrand and Henry
IV, ; the German rulers of the Western Empire con
stantly asserted the right of control over the papal
elections. Political interfejence continued for a long
time afterwards, gradually growing less as the Church
closed the avenues through which it was exercised.
Until the eleventh century the people of Rome, as well
a,s tlic Bishops, took part in the election. When Nich
olas II restricted the right to the College of Cardinals
in the twelfth century, the rule requiring a two-thirds
vote was established. In the thirteenth century, fol
lowing the death of Clement IV, when an interregnum
of nearly three years intervened before the coronation
of Gregory X, the Conclave was established, and from
that time until the present the Cardinals, on the death
of a Pope, have been cut off from the world and from
all outside connections, until another Pope was elect
ed. The last relic of this old political interference
was abolished in 1904 when Pope Pius abbrogated the
custom, that had been long recognized, of allowing a
Catholic power to express its objection to one about
to receive the two-thirds vote required for election,
a custom known as “the right of veto.”
It is not to be marvelled then, if special news
paper writers, many of whom have not had the op
portunity of knowing the history of the Church’s long
struggle for freedom from political power, see in the
papal elections an occasion for the exercise of all of
the intrigue and maneuvering that features a political
affair. However, the wrong impression made by one
writing in this frame of mind should not be permit
ted to pass uncorrected, for whatever may be the view
of one outside the Catholic Church in regard to her
authority and her mission, the great body of the
faithful are hurt at the suggestion, even when made by
well meaning persons, that the Papal Conclave is a big
political event. For the most part, they know the
history of the Catholic church has been one lottge un
ceasing struggle for freedom from the evil influence of
political power.
Ladies enjoy the privilege of writ
ing letters about nothing in par
ticular and of putting the burden
of their correspondency ju a post
script. Preachers sometimes- find
this system effective fn their> ser
mons. (V London Vic4r pleads’ for a
more cheerful funefal ^service. He
Current Comment
On Pope Pius XI
does not pretend that it Sliould be
a bright and cheery affair; but he
feels that the trappings of gloom
should be removed. It is not this,
however, that prompts this vicar to
lament the sadness of the Anglican
funerals which he has witnessed.
He says that the service seems to be
more occupied with the edification
of the mourners than with the soul
of the dead., , The f?port of his ad
dress closes as follows. “The vicar
would like to see some of the beau
tiful rites of the sixteenth century
revived.” This would seem to mean
the Mass.
' Though We dwellers in the wild
and woolly west have listened to the
lure of worldliness, we have always
solaced ourselves with the thought
that the country has not gone en
tirely to the dogs, and that New Eng
land, at least, would continue to pre
serve those traditions of saintli
ness fiioin which we have sorrow
fully departed. Now the spirit of
revolt has hit Massachusette. Two
men were arrested recenly for play
ing checkers on Sunday. To add to
the heinousness of their shameless
exhibition they perpetrated Ihe ofy
fence In a public park. Under the
law they were found guilty of “gam
ing on the Lord’s Day.” As people
glorying in their shame, there is ac
tually a movement afoot to legalize
the playing of checkers in Massa
chusetts on Sunday. Whither are
we drifting?
Sir John Ivnill, who has just re
tired frdm the presidency of the
English Superior Council of the St.
Vincent de Paul Society, was the
second Catholic Lord Mayor of Lon
don. His father, Sir Stuart, being
the first. The Lord Maypr of Lon
don was one of the most picturesque
civic jobs in the world, with a tra
dition that goes back beyond the
ancient story of Dick Whittington.
He lives at the Mansion House dur
ing his year of office* and drives
around the city in a horse-drawn
coach with liveried footmen. On
state occasions lie uses a huge gilded
vehicle piloted by a portly white-
wigged coachman. Yet Sir John
Knill managed to get away from-all
this—and enjoy getting away from
it— to carry out his humble ;work
among the poor as a Brother of
St. Vincent de Paul.
Few will observe Lent with the
severity which urged one family to
pul a ban on the telling of any but
fish stories at the dinner table. But
in conformity with pious custom
many of us will attempt little sac
rifices to keep ourselves in accord
with the spirit of the penitential
season. The girls will give up can
dy, and the men will eschew tobac
co. After a week of it most of them
will quit, and judging by the vici
ous tempers which people customar
ily acquire during the period of sac
rifice, it is a wise dispensation of
providence that makes the craving
for candy and tobacco stronger than
the will to forsake them. It would
be mean to get rich by means of
Lenten sacrifices. There would he
no real sacrifice in going without
theaters and taxis during Lent if
your found yourself with a nice lit
tle wad at the end of it. Why not
devote the money thus saved to the
home missionaries, Tor whom Msgr.
Kelley is appealing with his Mis
sionary Dollar Club? And if you
can’t give up luxuries, why not make
the sacrifice by devoting to this
charity a dollar for every dollar you
spend in luxury.
Laughter is a tonic for both sou.
and body. This being so I think
we are not nearly sufficiently grate
ful to the Associated Press for the
tremendous service which it is per
petually rendering to the enlighten
ed section of the community. Here
is its latest witticism, rescued by
the “Echo”; “Gen. Zodochowski.
leader of the Jesuits, in an interview
with the Popolo Romano, said the
Jesuits did not intend to put for
ward a candidate for Pope at the
coming conclave.” This is but ad
ditional evidence of the wisdom of
the old adage to the effect that
many a truth is spoken in jest.
Washington, D. C.—Secular edi
torial appreciations of the new Su
preme Pontiff and the comments
of the individuals outside the Cath
olic Church—including a Bishop of
the Protestant Episcopal Church—
arc in effect a chorus of praise for
fiis qualities of heart and mind and
of good wishes for the success of his
Pontificate.
Blended with these personal tri
butes to the new Pope are to be not
ed many expressions ot deference
to the Catholic Church. One of the
most remarkable of these acknowl
edgements of the Church’s place and
power in the world is that in an
editorial which appeared in the
New York Times.
NEW YORK TIMES
Speaking of the elecetion of Pius
XI, The Times declares “his scholar
ship, liis intellect, his experience
and his character are worthy of that
majestid office.” the Papacy. “Talent
energy, will, and a comprehensive
mind , are his.” Turning to the
Catholic Church, the writer of the
editorial says:
“The Church, regarded always sub
specie aeternitatis, gone on in its
unending and ecumenic career. It
is not Italian hut universal; and its
general ecclesiastical powers and
policies transcend immeasurably the
necessarily shifting and mutable ac
cidents : and compromises of diplo
macy,” ;
WASHINGTON POST
Hailing the new head of the
Church as a man “sprung from the
people,” the Washington Post says:
“From a reign beginning so auspic
iously, great things may legitimately
be hoped, and accordingly every
one will join in the pious aspira
tion to the new Pontiff—ad multos
annos 1”
BOSTON GLOBE
Pius XI is estimated by the Boston
Globe as a man of great mental
and moral stature, with diplomatic
skill and experience of industrial
conditions and controversies to
guide him. “With such a back
ground he comes to a commanding
position in a critical hour of the
world’s history, and finds awaiting
him the good will and best wishes
of all Christians,” says tlic Globe.
BOSTON TRANSCRIPT
Not only the Catholic Church, but
the world, may be congratulated on
the election of Pius XI, the Boston
Transcript believes. The “liberal
tendencies” ascribed to the new
Pope says the Transcript, are not
to be interpreted as promising any
modification of the dogmas oh the
Church. “That phrase,” says this
Boston paper, “does not signify that
in spiritual matters, or on questions
of doctrine or thought, he stands
on any other ground whatsoever
than the traditionally solid foun
dation from which no Pontiff has
departed or is likely to depart.”
The new Pope “will be acclaimed
with sincere joy by the Church
whose.head he now becomes; he will
be venerated by the whole world,”
says the Transcript and adds: “The
records that he will leave, in the
composing of, differences, in the in
fluence that # he will exercise upon
a world weary of war and contro
versy, sort of heart, is yet to be
written.”
NEW YORK WORLD.
The strength shown by Pius XI
with the people of turbulent and
radical Milan, when he was Cardinal
Archbishop of that See, is taken
as a sign by the New York World
that he has “a sympathetic interest
in the new problems introduced into
human society by industrial expan
sion and political evolution.”
“The Roman Church, which had in
Leo XIII a Pope of splendid bril
liance, in Pius X one whose simple
piety was a model for the devout
and in Benedict XV a .skilful pilot
in the stormy seas, seems to have
chosen for the day of vast prob
lems in world reconstruction one of
modern views and wide experience
of those instant and urgent ques
tions which will call for the exercise
of all his physical and mental vigor”
declares the World.
BALTIMORE SUN.
The Baltimore Sun believes that
“as an ambassador of religious and
international peace and good will,”
the election of Pius XI “will be wel
come as one. of the encouraging
signs of the times.”
ARTHUR BRISBANE.
“Upon him falls a burden that the
Popes have carried for centuries—
almost two thousand years,” write*
Arthur Brisbane for the Hearst
papers. “Their influence reaches
into every corner of the earth, into
ice houses in the North, mud huts
on the Equator. They must under
stand not one nation but the wholo