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About The bulletin of the Catholic Laymen's Association of Georgia. (Augusta, Ga.) 1920-1957 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 10, 1932)
s THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA DECEMBER 10, 1932 THE BULLETIN The Official Organ of the Catholic Laymen’s Associa- tion of Georgia RICHARD REID. Editor U09 Lamar Building Augusta. Georgia Subscription Price. $2,00 Her Year. Published semi-monthly by the Publicity Department with the Approbation of the Most Rev. Bishops of Re- leigh, Charleston, Savannah, St. Augustine, Mobile, Natchez, and Nashville and of the Rt. Rev. Abbot, Ordinary of Belmont. Member of N. C. W. C. News Service, the Catholic Press Association of the United States, the Georgia Press Association and the National Editorfpl Association FOREIGN ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE George J Callahan. 240 Broadway. New York. ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1931-1932 P. H. RICE. K. C. S. G„ Augusta President HONORARY VICE-PRESIDENTS COL. P. H. CALLAHAN, K. S. G Louisville. Ay. 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 v-ECILE FERRY. Augusta. Asst. Publicity Director Vol. XIII.December 10, 1932 No. 23 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 Coordinating Industry and Agriculture W HILE the great industrial centers of the nation are faced with the appalling task of caring for tens and hundreds of thousands of unemployed who do not know where their next meal is coming from, the At lanta Chamber of Commerce through its “Forward Geor. gia Committee” asserts that there are few hungry' and unemployed in the agricultural sections of Georgia. The committee, of which Mr. Roy LeCraw is chairman, is endeavoring to take advantage of this situation with a “Back to-the-Farm” Movement to relieve the situation in Atlanta which, like other large centers of population, has thousands of unemployed who must be supported by the community. The system of aiding these employable unemployed is, in the committee’s opinion, "propping them instead of helping them.” “Is this the best method?’’ the committee asks. “We business men know it is not. As for the unemployed themselves, over eight hundred t^ho have appealed to the Chamber of Commerce and the Forward Georgia Committee to be sent to farms, have testified that they disliked the dole type of relief, that they were losing their self-respect and initiative and desired only a chance to work. Men inherently despise paternalism.” They wished to work, but there was no work. It ap peared that there would be none for "Some time. But there are fifty thousand abandoned farms in Georgia. “Many counties have two-thirds of their farms vacant. Their prosperity has declined as their population has de creased. They need and want these people. The maj- iority of Atlanta’s unemployed came from farms and know how to farm—at least to make a living, if not to make money.” So a movement was launched to place these people on abandoned farms, using to establish them in their new locations and to sustain them until they make a food crop the money previously used to give them food and provide them with shelter. Of the first forty families thus placed, all of whom were drawing charity rations in Atlanta, only seven are now receiving or need such help. A Bishop in one of the great industrial centers of the East, one of the most scholarly, able and practical mem bers of the hierarchy, recently expressed himself as be ing convinced that the “back to the farm” movement is the best solution of the plight in which American, in dustry finds itself. The country people have flocked to the city in the days when they could find employment there, ahd now that there is no longer employment for them they still remain in the city. In the country they could at least feed themselves. This of course is not a complete solution. People with only enough to eat can hardly live as free men. “Not by bread alone doth man live.” The other demands of his rational nature must be met. But people with enough to eat are infinitely freer than those who are hungry. It is a step in the right direction. To the objection that there is already too much pro duced to feed the people of the nation and that the trouble is its distribution, it may be answered that this fact does not help a hungry man and his suffering family and children. > In no other country, except perhaps in England, has in dustry been so completely divorced from agriculture aa in the United Elates. An industrial worker with a stake in the land has a reason for confidence impossible to the Strictly factory worker. Perhaps the depression will teach us how to coordinate industry and agriculture after the manner of the ancient Catholic Guilds. The religious issues should never again show its head in Georgia,” says the Jackson Progress-Argus, as quoted in the Crawfordville Democrat. “We are one people, with one ambition and aspiration,' and there is no place for religious prejudice or intolerance. The founders of the government built better than they knew when the constitution guaranteed to every man freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the right of peaceful issemblage.” Interpreting the Bible T HE Richmond Times-Dispatch has a columnist, Thomas Lomax Hunter, who tries to think for him- ~self and who very often, perhaps without knowing it, finds himself in accord with the teaching of the Catho lic Church, as thinkers will when they follow the rules of logic. People have not lost faith in the Bible, Mr. Hunter, writing as “The Cavalier”, asserts, but they have lost faith in the perversion of the Bible. “Any law book implies a court or authoritative in terpreter,” he asserts. “We have a book called the Code of Virginia, but we do not expect that by its mere publication we shall ac complish a compliance with its many provisions. If we did, we should soon'have as many interpretations of the Code of Virginia as we now have of the law book called the Bible. “The reason we see so many people finding in the Bible a justification for regarding as pious their super stitions and prejudices is that they have undertaken to interpret a great book with a small mind. Left to him self, the small man makes out of the Bible a god of his own image; finds texts to confirm him in the idea of his superior piety and abundant proof to the fact that all other people are abominations.’’ The Cavalier does not say so, but this is substantially the teaching of the Catholic Church. Private interpre tation of the Bible is not a Catholic principle. The Catho lic Church maintains she is the divinely appointed custodian and interpreter of the Scriptures. “Going, therefore, teach ye all nations,” Christ said to His Apostles. “And behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world.” “The gates of ■ Hell shall not prevail against it (the Church).” When the founders of the nation established this Re public they set up the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution; there was to be no private interpretation there. The founders of the Republic make this court the court of last resort. Had they the power to make it in fallible they would have done so. Christ had the power to make the supreme court of the Church infallible. He did so. That is the Catholic position. Those outside the Church do not admit this infallibility. Most of them are defenders of private interpretation of the Scriptures. But they must admit that, whatever their opinion of the infallibility of the Church in its in terpretation of the Scriptures when it undertakes to de clare what is its official teaching, the system works. While private interpretation' has split the rest of Christendom into a thousand differing and often warring factions, the Catholic Church, 350,000,000 strong, is one in faith. It seems that the fundamental mistake of the Bishops of Malta and the clergy there is that they are not Eng lish but Maltese. English controls Malta, and while the Maltese have expressed themselves as satisfied to be a part of the British Commonwealth of Nations, they do not relish their nationality or their religion being con sidered foreign by foreigners in their own land. The Church and Politics rpHE Record of Louisville, edited by Benedict Elder, j J. notes that of the more than one hundred Catholic newspapers in the United States, not more than one or two indicated a choice between the contending politi cal parties in the recent election. That is as it should be, The Record says, and it continues: . “The Catholic Press is a part of Catholic Action, in deed the coordinating medium, as the Hierarchy is the coordinating head, of all phases of Catholic Action, ih which politics that is to say practical, organized politics as distinguished from political thought and philosophy, has no place in this country. Thus our Catholic Press proved itself true not only to the teachings of the Church but also to the principles of State in America, and Catho lics have just reason to be proud of the fact.” This does not mean that the Catholic Press will never and must never get into politics. Let a political effort be made to deprive Catholics of their rights or let the natural rights of the Church be threatened, and the Church be threatened, and the Catholic Press and the Catholic Church will use all moral means, including political action, to defend the Church’s legitimate in terests. But there was no such issue in the recent campaign nor in any other in this country with which we are familiar, excepting such movements as the attempts to outlaw Catholic schools in Oregon, Washington, Michi gan and elsewhere. The extent to which Catholics who are Catholics will go to avoid mixing religion and politics is indicated by an incident recently in Chicago. Some politically-minded women stationed boys outside the Church of St. Phillip Neri to distribute campaign literature as the parishohers left the church. The literature was designed to flame Catholics against one of the presidential nominees. Mon signor Kinsella, the pastor, ordered them away. The women appealed to a police officer, who said the boys had a right to distribute the literature. Monsignor Kin sella thereupon requested his parishioners to refrain from taking the circulars,, political circulars and got one hundred per cent cooperation. Dixie Musings The University of North Carolina Press recently published a work of great importance to Georgia and the Southeast in “The Key to the Golden Islands” by Carita Doggett Corse. It is particularly important at this time when Georgia is about to observe the bicentennial of the founding of the colony by Oglethorpe, reminding us, as it does, that Georgia has a def inite, recorded history two hundred years or so older than the history of the colony. That is to say that the coming of Oglethorpe was a sort of half-way point between the start of Georgia’s recorded history and this year of Our Lord. Mrs. Corse in her admirable work does not go back to the expeditions of De Allyon or Narvaez in the 1520’s, or to De Soto’s march through the en tire Southeast in 1539-42, but she starts with a little known phase of the history of this section, the com ing of the French to the Southeast. This was in April, 1562, three years before Menendez established St.| Au gustine, 45 years before Jamestown, 58 years before Plymouth and 171 years before Oglethorpe. Ribaut planted colonies on the St. John’s River, just south of Georgia’s preseqt boundary, and at Charleston, near Port Royal in South Carolina. Twen ty-three years before, the French burned Havana, indicating the rela tions then existing between the French and Spanish. Ribaut, who was a Huguenot, re turned to France in an effort to get further support for his colonies from Admiral Coligny, the Huguenot lead er, but the Admiral was not enthusi astic. Philip II of Spain, learning through published reports of Ribaut about the French colonies in the ter ritory he considered Spain’s, sent a force to eject them, but the colonists had already gone. In 1564 Coligny sent Rene Laudonniere to the colony on the St. John’s, and the year follow ing Ribaut returned at the very time that Menendez was arriving to found St. Augustine. Menendez and his Spanish fleet at tacked the French on the St. John’s, but the French escaped, and nearly captured Menendez near St. Augus tine. Menendez, suspecting that the French settlement on the St. John’s was undermaned because of the ab sence of those who were pursuing him, returned from St. Augustine by forced marches to Fort Caroline on the St. John’s, with 500 grumbling men, captured the fort, killed 132 French soldiers and took 50 women and children prisoners. Queen Eliz abeth expressed pleasure over this victory of Menendez over Ribaut and the French. There was a terrific reaction in France. The French bided their time. In 1568 they dispatched a fleet under De Gourges, a distinguished officer of Catherine de Medici, who had tak en Mary Stuart, granddaughter of King James II of Scotland, from France to Scotland to ascend the throne, a task he accomplished de spite Queen Elizabeth’s refusal of a safe conduct. He was to avenge the defeat of the French at Fort Caro- lnie. and there was great rejoicing in Paris when news came that he had recaptured Fort Caroline, which the Spanish had renamed Fort Mateo, with a loss of 230 to the Spanish. Thus encouraged^ the French in 1573, established a trading post on St. Catherine’s Island, not far fi-om Savannah, under the leadership of Es- trozi, a cousin of Catherine de Me dici, the Queen of King Henry II and the Queen-Mother of his successors, the Spanish wiped out the settlement, however, and also scored a decisive victory seven years later over the fleet of Captain Gil who was sent out to prey on Spanish shipping. As many as 20 ships of Gil’s fleet appeared off the coast of Georgia in one month after his death. The Indians for the most part avoided the French and remained faithful to the Spanish. But 22 chiefs at Tolomato near Darien and on St. Simon’s Island joined with the French in a conspiracy against the Spanish, a conspiracy which was dis covered through a chance remark of an Indian visiting Cumberland Island and thwatred. This was the end of the French effort to secure control of the Southeast. The English efforts in this direction are better known. The first reference recalls the coming of the French on the St. John’s River. The colony of Laudonniere was in the throes of a de pression, due largely to their lead er’s incompetence. One sultry July day in 1564 John Hawkins, returning from a successful slaving expedition for which Queen Elizabeth was to knight him, dropped in on the French, who received him hospitably although not without some suspicion. Hawkins supplemented the scant stores of the French with supplies from his own. It is in connection with Hawkins’ visit that we find one of the very first references to tobacco. Mrs. Corse writes that after a meal “the English men set under the trees and watched withw onder while their hosts smok ed tobacco. In this they anticipated Sir Walter Raleigh many years.” Hawkins paid another visit to the Southeast and this time the Spanish discovered his fleet and destroyed it with the exception of two ships, his own and that commanded by his nephew, Francis Drake, who as Sir Francis Drake revenged the defeat when in 1586 he attacked St. Augus tine with a force of 2,000 from 21 ships and burned the city. There were 600 in the group which settled St. Augustine in 655. In 1648 the population of St. Augustine num bered 300 families; in 1740, seven years after the founding of Georgia by Oglethorpe, the civilian population of the Ancient City was 2143. The Span ish garrison in the Southeast usually numbered about 2,000. In 1568, two years after the first Jesuit missionaries came, including Father Pedro Martinez, the first Jes uit martyr in the Western hemi sphere as far as we have been able to ascertain, a Jesuit mission was es tablished “near the garrison of San Pedro on what is now Cumberland Island; Orista, north of Guale in the Port Royal region, was placed in charge of Father Rogel, while Broth ers Augustin and Ruiz labored on the island of Guale (St. Catherine’s). Here Brother Augustin wrote the first Indian grammar ever compiled in America. Thus the first grammar ever compiled on this continent was written in Georgia. The effort of Estrozi, cousin of Catherine de Medici, to establish a trading colony on St. Catherine’s Is land — he actually built a fort and carried on trade with the natives— was furthered by the demand in Eu rope for sassafras “to make a tea which had become the rage in Europe since the Spanish garrisons in Florida (after the fashion of present-day tes timonials for curealls), had declared that it kept them in good health while living in this strange land.” But the French garrison, seeking the means of health, found death at the hands of their Spanish adversaries. In 1573 the Franciscans came to the Southeast, succeeding the Jesuits, who were reassigned to Cuba and Mex ico. Despite occasional trouble with the Indians, as in 1597, when an up rising led by a young chief a mis sionary had upbraided for his im moral life, resulting in the massacre of five priests, the missions flourished to such an extent that in 1606 Bishop Altamirano of Cuba, with jurisdiction also over Cuba, confirmed 350 at St. Augustine and conferred Holy Orders on 20 others, and confirmed at least 1,188 Indians within the present con fines of Georgia. He confirmed five chiefs and 308 Indians at Cumberland Island, 208 at Talaxe and 268 at St. Catherine's Island, and numerous oth ers elsewhere. This was one year before Jamestown and 14 years before Plymouth. One of the illustrious missionaries was Father Pareja, who barely miss ed martyrdom in the massacre of 1597. He was of a noble family of Aunon in the province of Toledo in Spain. His writings are the chief source of present knowledge of the Indian customs and beliefs of the In dians of the Southeast of those days; “He was the author of catechisms, grammars and manuals which are treasured in the great libraries today.” His last days were spent in Mexico, where his books were published. The number of missionaries labor ing in the Southeast varied. In 1606 six new missionaries arrived; in 1612, 24, most of them assigned to Geor gia. Thirty, 40 and even 50 constitut ed the usual corps of priests here. Nor did they confine their efforts to the coast. One of the most flourishing centers was among the Apalachi, with what is now Apalachicola as its focus, and spreading its influence through Southwest Georgia around Albany and the Flint River and westward be yond the Chattahoochee. In the early 1600’s Father Pareja had 35 priests laboring in his terri tory, and wanted 55, a request which was denied by the civil authorities, at least in part. He had 8,000 native converts, and reported that 107 Ap- alache villages were askling for priests. In 1634 there were 44 Fran ciscan missions in the Southeast, and in 1650 there were 20 missions just along the coast and nine missionary centers in the Apalachicola territory, with a flourishing trade in turkeys and deerskins. Three to four thou sand bushels of beans were shipped annually to St. Augustine. The Spanish encouraged the Indians to settle in one place; they never gave arms to the Indians until the English, “by selling these to their native allies, forced. the Spanish to protect their Indians in like manner.” The cruelty of the Spanish toward the Indians and toward their adver saries is a historic tradition in toe United States. As a matter of fact, the Indians were better treated by no one than by the Spaniards, who gath ered them into communities, taught them the arts of civilization and gave them a security and prosperity they had never known before. It was the English under Moore in the early 1700’s who devastated the Indian settle ments in Georgia and left them smok ing ruins. It is significant that wher ever the Spanish settled, as in Mex ico and South America, the Indian remained as long as the Spanish; where the English settled, the Indian was annihilated. The only places in. the United States where one finds Indians today are in those spots where the Catholic influence per sisted. There are many acts of cruelty re corded in Mrs. Corse’s book, but the Spanish had no monopoly of them. (Continued on Page Seven)
