The bulletin (Augusta, Ga.) 1920-1957, October 25, 1930, Image 4

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4 THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC L AYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA OCTOBER 25, 1930 THE BULLETIN The Official Organ of the Catholic Laymen's Associa- tion of Georgia £ RICHARD REID. Editor 1^09 Lamar Building Augusta, Georgia Subscription Price, $2.00 Per Year. Published .semi-monthly by the Publicity Department with the Approbation of the Rt. Rev Bishops of Re- leigh, Charleston. Savannah. St. Augustine. Mobile ana Natchez.■ Member of N. C. W. C. N ews Service, the Catholic Press Association of the United States, the Georgia Press A psooiation and the National r.ditPr*a 1 Association FOREIGN ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE S. T. Mattingly, Walton Building Atlanta, Ga. ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1928-1929 P. H. RICE, K. C. S. G., Augusta President HONORARY VICE-PRESIDENTS COL. P. H. CALLAHAN, K. S. G Louisville, K.y. ADMIRAL WM. S. BENSON, K. C. S. G„ Washington BARTLEY J. DOYLE, Philadelphia J. J. HAVERTY, Atlanta First Vice-President J. R. McCALLUM. ■ Atlanta , Secretary THOMAS S. GRAY, Augusta Treasurer RICHARD REID. Augusta Publicity Director MISS CECILE FERRY, Augusta, Asst. Publicity Director Vol. XI. October 25, 1930. No. 20. Entered as second class 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. The 1930 Convention The annual convention of the Catholic Laymen’s As sociation of Georgia is unique not only in the United States but in the Catholic world. There are other state and diocesan gatherings of Catholics, many of them per haps similar to the Georgia convention, but none iden tical. For fourteen years the men and women of Georgia have been gathering annually to review the work of the year and to plan for future efforts intended ‘to bring about a friendlier feeling among Georgians, ir respective of creed.” Jhe dawn of the Association’s fif teenth year finds them as zealous for the work as in the days when rampant anti-Catholicism in the state made activity such as the Laymen’s Association was formed :o conduct necessary if Catholics were to remain here. Columbus will be host to the convention this year, as it was on a former memorable occasion, in 1924. This year, as then, the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Savamiah will grace the occasion by his presence. Dr. John G. Coyle, one of the great Catholic orators of America, will-come down from New York to deliver the principal lay address. Benedict Elder, the Association’s good friend from Louis ville, Ky., who is president of the Catholic Press As sociation of the United States, will come. The state of ficers and members from every section of Georgia will be there. A great deal depends on the 1930 convention in Co lumbus. When the Association met there in 1924, there were some in the state who felt that conditions had so improved that the need for the Association had passed. In every year since that time embryo waves of bigotry have been smoothed out by pouring facts on the trou bled waters. Even the 1928 tidal wave was rendered in effective. Efforts to turn the recent settlement of the Roman question against Catholics in this state proved futile in this state because of the campaign of educa tion conducted by the Laymen’s Association. It is vain to hope that there will be no future at tempts on the part of anti-Catholics to place Catholics In this state in a false light. It is not vain to hope that inch attempts will likewise prove abortive if there is a layman's Association to bring the facts to the press *nd people of Georgia. Attendance at the convention la Columbus by as many as can possibly come, even at • sacrifice, is the first step in not only continuing but Btrengthening the peace-breeding work of the Catholic laymen’s Association of Georgia. Catholics and Intolerance The Democratic party in Massachusetts is at least seventy-five per cent Catholic. Perhaps its Catholic members number nearer eighty or ninety per cent. Recently the Democrats went to the polls to select standard bearers for the November election. For .gov ernor they named Joseph B. Ely, a Protestant and descendant of the Puritans. For the United States Sen ate they nominated Marcus Coolidge, also a Protestant, a distant relative of the former president, and descended from the same Protestant stock. Both men were opposed by Catholics. The Democratic party in Rhode Island resembles in its makeup that of Massachusetts. Here the Democrats nominated for the senate Former Senator Peter G. Gerry, a Protestant, and for governor, Theodore Francis Green, likewise, we are informed, a Protestant. In New York State most of the Democrats are Catho lics. There the party’s nominee for governor is Frank lin Roosvelt, a Protestant. The state has two Democrats in the United States Senate, Senator Copeland, a Protestant, and Senator Wagner, also a Protestant. Where in this great American Union is there a state in which Protestants predominate in a political party and where Catholics receive so much recognition? The Constitution of the United States forbids applying the religious test to a candidate for public office. It is evident that in the instances mentioned the letter and the spirit of the Constitution was obeyed. These men were not nominated because they were Protestants or in spite of the fact, but because of their demonstrated ability and known character. These instances again re veal the ridiculousness of the “Roman Catholic intoler ance” and “Roman Catholic political domination” accu sations bandied about by people who frankly admit they would not vote for a Catholic for constable, and who are the personification of the intolerance they attribute to Catholics. The March of Progress When we prescind from the romance of “the good old days,” which, as we are informed, never existed in the rosy colors in which they are painted, and compare conditions today with those of bygone ages and cen turies, we feel a pride in the progress of mankind. It was not so long ago that death was the punish ment for innumerable crimes, many of them compara tively trivial. A reading of Dickens and his descriptions of the unfortunate motherless and fatherless little ones in English orphan homes or of the lot of prisoners in the jails of the country which prided itself on being the most cultured in the world make us congratulate our selves that we live in a more enlightened age. " Truly the world does move. There are some people, however, who think that Catholics have hot been gear ed to the march of progress, although an analysis of their charitable efforts and other works prove that they are in advance of it. They cite real and alleged occur rences by real and nominal Catholics of centuries ago and then condemn the Catholics of the twentieth cen tury for them. They seem to believe that all peoples but Catholics make progress in this civilization. Dixie Musings The Macon Telegraph editorially, quotes George Chamberlain, Ameri can consul at Glasgow, as saying that very few Scotchmen are coming to the United States. Hasn’t The Tele graph heard that they are being born here to save fare? The Charleston News and Courier says an effort was made in the recent senatorial campaign in that state to use the religious issue. The News and Courier inquired whether the people of the state were prepared to repudiate the memory of Major Gen eral M. C. Butler of the Confederate Army, long a member of the United States Senate, who died a Catholic, and Judge DeVore, Edgefield, of the state circuit court, who also hecam; a Catholic before his death two years ago, and Bishop England, whom Gen eral Martin Witherspoon selected for his list of the half dozen citizens of Charleston most illustrious in its his tory and many others. The News and Courier said it had confidence in Governor Smith not be cause he was a Catholinc but be cause he was faithful and attentive to his duties as a member of his Church. Joseph Quinn, editor of the South west Courier, carried a series of il lustrated articles on the Catholic edi tors of the country. Some of the edi tors reprinted the articles in their own newspapers. Not the editor of The Bulletin, however. He is afraid some of his readers might write to Mr. Quinn and give him the low-down on his contemporary in this neck of the woods. Archbishop Stritch of Milwaukee succeeds Archbishop Curley of Balti more as the youngest Archbishop in the United States, according to the Baltimore Catholic Review. Arch bishop Stritch is forty-three, ten years older than the Governor-elect of Georgia. Archbishop Stritch start ed his priestly career in his native South, in Nashville; Archbishop Cur ley started his in Florida. Both Arch bishops became Bishops at thirty-four. Both were Bishops for nine years be fore becoming Archbishop. Both were ordained in Rome, both were ordained by Cardinal Resphigi, vicar-general of Rome. Archbishop Curley was in stalled as Archbishop of Baltimore November 30, 1921, at ten o’clock in the morning, in the same year, month, day and hour that Archbishop Stritch was consecrated Bishop of Toledo. Therefore, according to the Baltimore Catholic Review, which discovered all these coincidences, the latter became the country’s youngest Bishop at the very hour that Archbishop Curley became the country’s youngest Arch bishop. Both are alumni of the Amer ican College at Rome. The New York Times recently re ported a laymen’s retreat held at the Princeton Theological Seminary for the alumni of the institution. officials at the same time laid a heavy hand on Holy Family parish. The first to be summoned was Mr. Rich ard Needham, a member of the En dowment Fund Committe; then Mr. P. J. McSorley, for many years state vice-president from Columbus, and finally Mr. J. M. Tobin, president of the local branch of the Laymen’s As sociation. It is seldom than any parish or organization is thus afflicted within such a short itme. The deaths of Mr. Needham and Mr. McSorley have been referred to in previous issues of The Bulletin. Mr. Tobin was at work on the plans for the coming convention of the Lay men’s Association when stricken; he had practically completed them. The 1930 convention will, therefore, be in the nature of a memorial to his un tiring and unselfish efforts, and his co-workers, under the direction of Mrs. H. C. Smith, have taken up the work where he put it down. They will make it a memorial worthy of him, a convention of which he would have had reason to feel proud had he been spared to attend it. A total of 2,360 men at the Citizens? Military Training Camp at Plattsburg, N. Y., many of them college men, participated in a recent essay con test on Americanism there. The win ner was Victor J. Rafinski 19, a junior at St. Francis College, Brooklyn, whose parents emigrated from Poland twenty-two years ago. His closest competitors were a Princeton stu dent, a student from Dartmouth and an assistant instructor at Columbia University. Begin at the Bottom The latest available statistics reveal that aoldiers lost their lives in the World War, Whom were Germans. Eighteen million of Were wounded. In a single common grave ten million 1,808,545 of all nations Frdnce thirty thousand unknown soldiers are buried. The cost of the war in money was two hundred and forty-seven billion dollars, or over two thousand dollars for every man, woman and child in the United States. Two thousand persons, five hundred and forty of whom idled instantly, were'poisoned in a single gas attack at Champagen in 1917. Future generations which the leaven of the teachings ®f Christ will have thoroughly permeated, will read of this war with as much amazement as we read of the sack «f Rome by the barbarians. What can we do about it? We can hardly sink our warships and destroy our guns while the rest of the world is shining up theirs. But every person whose re lations toward his fellow-men radiate the good will of Christ is doing what he can to promote the ideal of-uni versal peace. When we have enough such individuals, that ideal will be transformed into an actuality. A recent issue of the Toronto Daily Mail and Empire reports that “members of the Ontario district of the Missouri Synod, Lutheran Church, were strongly urged to work for the establishment of more parochial day schools for the education of Lutheran children along Christian educational ideas at the session in St. Paul’s Lutheran Church here. At present the Ontario district is operating five such parochial schools entirely without jfovemment aid.” Anti-Christian History “The Rise of the Christian Church” by Professor Godenough of Yale University is “prescribed for the Fre-hman Course in European History” there. Rev. T. Lawrason Riggs, an alumnus of Yale and authorized, as the Catholic Transcript of Hartford says, “to foster and protect the Christianity of the Catholic students of the University”, has registered a protest. Professor Good- enough regards Christianity as “one of the cults known as mystery religions which were widely prevalent in the Roman Empire during the first centuries of our era.” That is the Professor’s thesis, and this he proceeds to impose on his youthful, impressionable students with the authority and influence of his professional chair. “In the midst of this age of hatred of the Romans”, Dr. Goood&iough writes, referring to the years our Lord trod the earth, “there appeared about 28 A. D. in Pales tine a preacher. He was a young carpenter from the north of Gallilee, of whose past we know nothing ex cept that his home was in Nazareth, and that his family consisted of his mother, Mariam or Mary, her husband Joseph, and several other children.” Again, of the Crucifixion of our Lord, Dr. Goodenough, undertaking to dispose of the Resurrection, says that Jesus was “killed in a way which at once made him ac cused in the eyes of all good Jewsr. . .The excitement of the mob cooled as quickly as it had heated, and Jesus was soon forgotten.” There is nothing here which has not been said tinve and again by anti-Christian, anti-religious writers; there is nothing here which has not been refuted in every age by historians of established and enduring reputation. Yet here is a professor in a great university presenting these old, threadwom, discredited assertions in a work “prescribed for the Freshman Course in European His tory.” No doubt a similar situation exists in many other leading secular universities. Is it amazing, then, that so many inexperienced youths, exposed to such doctrine, the fallacy and erroneousness of which they are not in a position to see, and imposed upon by those to whom they look for guidance, should lose their faith? And is it peculiar that the Catholic Church seeks to preserve the faith of its young by endeavoring to protect them from such corroding doctrine? What is the defense of Catholic parents who refuse to cooperate with the Church in her efforts to preserve the faith of her children? Discussing the idea that a monu ment be erected to a deceased Junior Senator from Georgia, the Dalton Cit izen says it agrees with the Macon Telegraph when it says that he was not great enough in life to have a monument erected in his memory in the capitol or out. “A man who spent his life time abusing his bet ters and flying the flag of hatred is not a fit subject for a memorial of any kind,” says the Citizen. “His example in life is not worthy of emu lation. He should be forgotten.” The life of this man served at least one good purpose. It showed how ephe meral is the notoriety and how futile the career based on hate. Very often our Catholic societies and conventions wax eloquent in pro tests against ignoring of the parts Catholics played in American history. Now it is the contribution of the French in the development of the Ohio Valley that is under discus sion. Miss Mary‘Ross of Brunswick is demonstrating an infinitely better way of proceeding, and although she is not an organization she is succeed ing better than many a one in her efforts. The early history of Georgia in which the Spanish played such a large part, was being ignored in tills state. Miss Ross did not denounce; she did not protest; she did not ac cuse anyone of bigotry. She started to study the early history of Geor gia. Working with Professor Bolton of the University of California, she wrote many an interesting treatise on the subject. She directed the atten tion of historians to the facts, and in terested them. She emphasized the value of this early history to the state. In this effort The Bulletin has been happy to assist her. Georgia is gradually becoming conscious of its history for the two centuries be fore the coming of Oglethorpe, for merly the alpha of the state’s story. Protests and denunciation and recrim ination would have done nothing but- stir up ill feeling. Henry Clay Evans, Jr., commenting in his column in the Tampa Daily Times on the contemplated erection of an additional school there by the Salesian Fathers, says: “In these days of mumbo-jumbo that covers all of our state and public school systems, any city is fortunate which can possess church schools as well. For these are usually not too busy with red tape and theories to miss the chance of offering a real education to the young. Has the world become more cultured or civilized since the state has usurped the place of the church in education? I doubt it.” Father Gannon’s True Voice of Omaha prefers censorship of the stage to the force of public opinion advo cated by Monsignor Lavelle of New York. “Censorship—unpopular though it may be—seems to be the only prac tical way of keeping moral filth off the stage—at least in New York,” Father Gannon says. Unless censor ship has public opinion behind it, it can be accomplished little. Quimby Melton, editor of the Grif fin News, recently published a list of the 59 men who in his opinion rule Georgia. There was not a Cath olic among them. Therefore, what ever is wrong with Georgia, Catholics are not responsible. t “It was so warm in Georgia this summer,” says The Echo of Buffalo, “that they are now harvesting roast ed peanuts.” That’s a hot one. One of our contemporaries refers to Senator Blease as following Sim mons, Brown and Love into oblivion because of his opposition to the candi dacy of Governor Smith. Just to keep the record straight, Senator Blease made campaign speeches for Governor Smith, and at least once ducked a barrage of eggs in so doing. A prominent magazine editor picks Babe Ruth as one of the “really first rate men who subscribe to the ideas of the Catholic Church.” He forgot Connie Mack. A letter addressed to “The Bulletin, 1409 Lamar, Bldg., Atlanta, Louisia na,” was mailed in New Orleans, Fri day afternoon, October 3. It was de livered in the office at Augusta, Ga., on the first, mail Monday morning, quite as if it were properly address ed. Yet there are still people who criticize the Hoover administration. The Columbus branch of the Catho lic Laymen's Association has lost three of its leading officials and mem bers within the past few weeks, and the hand of death which took these Dr. A. C. Millar of Little Rock, Ark., in the recently primary con test in this state appealed to Arkansas anti-Smith Democrats” to refrain from voting in the primary and to hold themselves in readiness should “unfit” men, i. e. any man who campaigned for the Democratic presi dential nominee, be nominated. “Dr. Millar,” observes the Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph, “is editor of the Arkansas Methodist, organ of" the Methodist Church in Arkansas, doubtless a great champion of separation of Church and State.” BISHOP’S MOTHER DIES Mother of Bishop Joseph F. Rummel of Omaha Was 83 (By N. C. W. C. News Service) OMAHA, Neb.—Mrs. Theresa Rum mel, 83, mother of Rt. Rev. Joseph F. Rummel, Bishop of Omaha, died here late in August at the episcopal residence. Bishop Rummel was cele brating Mass in the private chapel of the residence at the time of his mother’s death. She had been fail ing steadily for 10 weeks, but was able to assist at Mass on the Feast of the Assumption. Surviving are, Bishop Rummel, the only son, and one sister, Mrs. Rose Schmelter, of Ossining, N. Y. CATHOLIC HEADS GLIDER WORK AT AIR SCHOOL (By N. C. W. C. News Service) SAN JOSE.—Albert G. Kelly, 20- year-old San Jose youth, has not only, succeeded in obtaining admission to the most exclusive air school in the country—the United States Navy Air School at Pensacola, Fla.—but in the short time he has been there has been placed in charge of glider construe- Young Kelly, a graduate of St, Joseph’s high school in 1927, left San Jose that year to join the medical air corps at Mare Island. While there he was among the few who were chosen to study at the Pensacola air schooL