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THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMENS ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA
JUNE 3. 1933
THE BULLETIN
The Official Organ of the Catholic Laymen's Associa
tion of Georgia
RICHARD REID. Editor
isO!) Lamar Building Augusta, Georgia
Subscription Price. $2.00 Per 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
Frees Association of the United States, the Georgia
Press Association and the National Dilitortnl Association
FOREIGN ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE
George .1 Callahan. 240 Broadway, New York,
ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1931-1932
P. a RICE. K. C. S. G., Augusta President
HONORARY VICE-PRESIDENTS
COL. P. H. CALLAHAN. K. S. G Louisville, ity.
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 OF.CILE FERRY. Augusta. Asst. Publicity Director
Vol. XIV.
June 3, 1933
No. 11
Entered as second class matter June 15, 1921, at the
Post Office at Augusta, Ga., under Act of March, llf/9,
Accepted for mailing at special rate of postage provided
for in Section 1103. Act of October 3, 1917, authorized
September 1. 1921
The Church Universal
A Georgia Pioneer
I T WAS with profound regie! that The Bulletin re
corded in its previous issue the death of Rev. Sister
Mary Genevieve of the Sisters of Mercy of Mount de
Sales Academy, Macon, one of the pioneer Sisters of
Mercy of Georgia.
Sister Mary Genevieve left her native New England
in 1867, two years after the close of the War Between
the States, to enter the Sisters of Mercy at Columbus.
For sixty-six years she had labored in Columbus and
Macon, sixty-six years filled with joyful self-sacrifice
for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
Sister Mary Genevieve lived a notable life, as do the
tens of thousands of other religious whose careers of
charity and self-sacrifice are lived beyond the gaze of
the world. But God takes account of their labors, as
we know he has taken account of those of Sister Mary
Genevieve when she came before the Eternal Throne.
May her life of prayer and toil on earth bring her an
eternity of joyful peace.
[pHE common but illogical tendency to judge the
I 1 world by conditions in one’s own ward and precinct
is responsible for the opinion prevailing in the United
States that slavery is as definitely ended as gladiatorial
butcheries.
Yet in the month of May there was held in London a
great mass meeting to further Catholic efforts to liberate
the five million human beings still held in bondage in
various parts of the world. The Archbishop of Liver
pool, the Most Rev. Richard Downey, D. D., and Sir John
Simon, Foreign Secretary, were the principal speakers.
One hundred years ago slavery was abolished by law
in the British Dominions. One hundred and seventy
years ago there were twenty thousand colored slaves in
London alone, the recent meeting was reminded.
The ending of slavery in the British Dominions ante
dated similar action in the United States by a generation.
In the early part of the nineteenth century there were
a number of anti-slavery societies in the South, and con
siderable influential sentiment against it; Alexander
Stephens, vice-president of the Confederacy, lists Jeffer
son, Clay and Pinckney among those with strong anti
slavery tendencies. It is quite probable that slavery
would have been abolished in the United States long
before the Sixties if it were not for the bitterness en
gendered by the tactics of the professional abolishionists.
Modern “reformers'’ have learned nothing from the ex
perience of the abolishionists and still alienate well-dis
posed people by their arbitrary and at times fanatical
programs.
Despite the abolishionists, slavery is a matter of history
in the United States, and the work of improving the lot
of those who had been held in bondage grows more ef
fective with each decade; the difficulties attending such
work weaken with the years.
The Church, with orders devoting their entire atten-
.tion to this field of labor, and others and secular clergy
not neglecting it, is doing more in proportion to its
facilities in the South than any other factor, and it again
demonstrates its Catholicity by its concern for and
assistance to those still in slavery, as demonstrated by
the movement reflected by the recent meeting in London.
Distinguished Service
T HE Historical Committee of the Atlanta Branch of
the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Georgia has
set an example which committees in every city might
well emulate.
The committee was appointed a year ago by Mr. Robert
R. Otis, president, with Mr. Stephens Mitchell as chair
man, and Mr. George C. Blohm, Mr. Bernard J. Kane,
and Mr. David Lewis as members. It was given no pro
gram, but was expected to formulate its own.
The members of the committee surveyed the field and
decided the most effective service they could render
would be to compile the records of the Catholics of At
lanta. They tvent to work, and thus far have recorded
the names, parents, dates of birth, baptism, marriage
and death, and other data of 2,300 members of the Church
in Atlanta between 1845 and 1871; they are still working.
Since most of those recorded were born between 1790
and 1825, the value of these statistics to the historian may
readily be seen. It is said to be the finest record of its
kind anywhere in Georgia, in the Church or out.
This is work which could be done effectively elsewhere
in Georgia by committees composed of men and women
interested in this or other fields. Similar committees are
functioning in some of the branches—committees on art,
literature, on social justice, on science, on press, all la
boring to serve Church and State by making more avail
able to their fellow-citizens, Catholic and non-Cath-
olic, the preceless heritage of the Church’s achieve
ments in the various fields. There is no finer form of
Catholic Action; there is no better way “to bring about a
friendlier feeling among neighbors irrespective of creed.”
Bigotry Is Un-Catholic
Joseph Quinn, the roamin’ Catholic
editor,! who oscillates between his
Southwest Courier at Oklahoma City
and Catholic Action at New Orleans,
with side trips to Catholic Press As
sociation executive board meetings,
sends us a panorama of the Century
of Progress at Chicago, with two fig
ures encircled and labeled with the
names of the editors of The South
west Courier and The Bulletin.
All we can say is that we hope it
will not prove to be two other fel
low's.
French is a funny language. For
instance, "Oh dahmn” means “To the
ladies”.
In the previous issue of The Bul
letin, one of our double-column
headlines had a comma missing. In
order to make the headline letter per
fect, we inserted the comma and had
the line reset. The line was reset
perfectly! and then substituted for
the wrong line. That was the ex
planation of the repetition of that
line, and not any recent “un-Consti-
tutional” legislation.
Years ago, in our secular newspap
er days, the headline man made one
of our captions over the story of the
death of a man of national promi
nence read: “He was in a state of
comma for a long period.”
The investiture of Mr. J. J. Haver-
ty as a Knight of St. Gregory will
long be remembered by' those fortu
nate c-nough to witness it. Bishop
Keyes’ remarks at the dinner and
Father Cotter’s sermon at the Mass
gave those who heard them a new
conception of this lofty honor, be
stowed, as Bishop Keyes succinctly-
said, by the dynasty which has the
best right of any- in the world to cre
ate Knights, a dynasty co-extensive
with the Christian era, and world
wide in extension. Three times have
Georgians been invested in this state
as Knights of St. Gregory, Captain
Rice at Augusta and Mr. Haverty
and Mr. Spalding in Atlanta. We
know of only two other similar cere
monies ever held in the South.
has Marist College, a preparatory-
school, with a faculty of Marist Fath
ers with' univerity degrees tip to and
including the doctorate in philoso
phy-, making it one of the strongest
high school faculties anywhere. In
the same parish, Sacred Heart, there
is a second school, Sacred Heart
Academy-, with primary, grammar
and high school, taught by the Sis
ters of St. Joseph’ of Carondolet. Im
maculate Conception parish has a
grammar and junior high school, un
der the direction of the Sisters of
Mercy of the Union. In St. An
thony’s parish the Sisters of St. Jo
seph conduct the city’s fourth' Cath
olic school, and the Franciscan Sis
ters conduct the fifth in Our Lady of
Lourdes parish for colored Catholics.
Yet Atlanta has a Catholic popu
lation estimated at not in excess of
five thousand. Perhaps some one was
judging its Catholic facilities by its ,
limited Catholic population.
The Greenwood, S. C., Index-Jour
nal reprints editorially and with ap
proval The Bulletin’s recent editorial
on the Scottsboro case in which the
mischief wrought by the intrusion of
self-seekers was deplored. Those
really interested in the progress of
the colored people know that this
is another ease where charity begins
at home, and they start by- endeavor
ing to improve the lot of the colored
people in their own city and state.
The Work in the South
! A BISHOP was once asked what the Catholics of the
JTX South are doing for the colored people. His answer
to his inquirers, who were not from the South, was
“What are you doing.”
Georgia is in the heart of the South. It may be termed
a typical Southern state. Tire Catholic Directory credits
it with less than 18,000 Catholics; there are many parishes
in the populous Catholic centers outside the South with
more members than there are in the entire Diocese of
Savannah, which is over seven times the size of
Massachusetts. In one section two priests serve eight
churches and numerous missions scattered over a terri
tory twice the size of Massachusetts.
Yet there are in Georgia five parishes for colored Cath
olics in addition to missions, five schools, an orphanage,
and other institutions, under the direction of the Society
of African Missions; in addition, where there are no
colored parishes, the colored Catholics are attending
the common church.
Judged from the standpoint of tire size and the colored
population of Georgia, this is not a great deal; judged by
the number of Catholics in the state and in the light of
the fact that most of the colored Catholics of Georgia
are converts or the sons and daughters of converts, the
recorj is nothing short of amazing. Tire work that the
Society of African Missions is doing in Georgia is being
duplicated by the Jcsephites, the Holy Ghost Fathers,
the. Fathers of the Divine Word, the Passionists, the
Jesuits, the Benedictines, the secular clergy and num
erous others in every part of the South, assisted by
various orders of Sisters.
The work among the colored people is made possible in
part by assistance from interested friends outside the
South as well as in it, who thereby indicate a most ef
fective way of helping to solve the problem.
I T IS an axiom among Catholics that there are Catho
lic bigots as well as other kinds, which is only an
other way of saying that the Catholic Church is com
posed of members who are human, and that all of them
do not rise above this human weakness. Even those whom
majority opinion would place in the bigoted class lament
the fact that there are such people. They are in the
Church but not throughly of it, for a truly Catholic-
minded man or woman cannot be bigoted.
But, granting that bigotry is not confined to any group
or members of any denomination, we look in vain for
examples among Catholics of such outbursts of prejudice
as those which are continually flaming up against Catho
lics in supposedly enlightened communities.
For instance, Northern Ireland is about thirty-five or
forty per cent Catholic; there are twice as many Catho
lics there proportionately as there are in the United
States.
While the Irish Free State, overwhelmingly and all but
unanimously Catholic, is giving to Protestants many
times the number of officers to which they are entitled
by virtue of their numbers, Lord Craigavon, the North
ern Premier, boasts that his Parliament is “a Protestant
Parliament for a Protestant people.”
Lord Craigavon recently present to the Northern Par
liament a painting of the Prince of Orange, afterward
King William III of England, surrounded by generals
and leaders of the Dutch Republic. In one coiner of the
picture was a mitred figure, presumed to be the Pope;
elsewhere in the picture was a friar.
A party of visitors from Glasgow was being shown
through the Parliament House and saw the painting. One
member splashed the picture of the Pope with red ink.
Another slashed the picture of the friar. Three mem
bers of the party were arrested; one was described by
the police as “general organizer of the Scottish Protestant
League.” The others also were professional anti-
Catholics.
This “Orange” spirit against Catholics cannot be
duplicated by citing a similar spirit among Catholics
against Protestants anywhere. Comparisons of widely
distant places and incidents widely separated by time
are often misleading and unfair; a comparison between
Northern and Southern Ireland, or between Holland and
Belgium, or between Quebec and Ontario or between
the sections of the United States where Catholics and
Protestants predominate is not.
It was our hope that the “Orange” anti-Catholic spirit
was weakening in Northern Ireland, just as it has slump
ed in the United States, and we trust that the reports
we read in secular as well as religious newspapers from
time to time are not typical. Catholics are not so jealous
of their spirit of Chdistian good will toward their neigh
bors that they are not willing to have all the- world
emulate and share it. .
The late Admiral Benson w'as a
Knight of St. Gregory also, a Georgia
Knight of St. Gregory, although the
honor was conferred elsewhere. J. W.
Conway, of Atlanta and Washington,
was made a Knight of St. Gregory in
North Carolina at the instance of the
late Bishop Haid. Three Georgians
have been Knights of Malta. Admiral
Benson, Mr. Spalding and Mr. A. E.
Martin of Augusta and Manchester,
Vermont, the investiture of Mr. Mar
tin as a Knight taking place in Au
gusta last year.
Georgians who are not Catholics do
net know a' great deal about these
Papal honors, but when they note
the character and the calibre of the
Georgians upon whom they are con
ferred, they have new respect for the
distinctions conferred on them.
Tuesday was "Yankee Memorial
Day”. The South was reminded of it
when the mail failed to come. The
le of poppies was a reminder, too.
The American Legion is encouraging
its observance, and perhaps some day
the observance will be nation-wide.
The distinguished Secretary of La
bor, Madam Secretary Perkins,, we
suppose one would call her, is quot
ed as saying that if wages and work
ing conditions in the South are im
proved as much as she hopes, those
who want to get rich should buy shoe
factories and provide shoes for the
South, for then Southern workers
»ould be able to buy them.
Someone sends us a poem entitled;
“Why I Like the North Better Than
the South.” Here's one stanza;
“They say the schools are finer here
than down in Carolina, where 'white
folks’ think that ‘negro’ spells dis-
grace; in the North our colored
brother is as loved as any other and
we grant to him his just and rightful
place.” Oh, yeah?
Our information is that there is a
greater percentage of unemployment
among the colored people outside
the South than in it. That's one way
of indicating regard for “our colored
brother.’”
The condition of the colored peo
ple is far from ideal in either the
North or the South. People of good
will in both sections are doing all
they can to work out the problem.
It must be worked out slowly, grad
ually, step by step, without doing
violence to man’s free will, just as
all problems must be worked out.
The . Southern Baptist Convention
in Washington heard Dr. Barton de
mand federal laws for the preventing
or controlling of divorce. The Macon
Telegraph remarks editorially that
“there are some things that have to
be generated in the heart of man. and
these things are the work of the
Church.”
Our impression is that Protestants
as a whole are not opposed to di
vorce; certainly the statistics in “Pro
testant” states do not indicate any
thing else. From a Catholic stand
point, such legislation would be in
order, for it would proceed from the
conviction "generated in the heart of
man” that divorce is morally wrong.
If the Protestant churches - wish to
eliminate divorce, they should labor
to implant in the consciences of their
people the conviction of the immor
ality of divorce. Until that is done,
legislation is only a gesture.
The Atlanta Christian Council has
demanded the arrest of Mayor Key
and the members of City Council
who voted to legalize beer in At
lanta despite the fact that the laws
of Georgia forbid its sale. Where
and when has a group of Catholic
priests demanded that officials be
arrested for doing something of
which they did not approve? And
how similar groups would warn
about the “return of the Inquisi
tion” and ‘mixing Church and State”
if Catholics w'ere to take similar ac
tion!
Someone has perhaps been tell
ing the Secretary of Labor (lie story
about them running down seniors at
the University of Georgia to put shoes
on them. She does not know, ap
parently, that this story has all the
earmarks of originating at Georgia
Tech, where the attitude toward the
University of Georgia—and it is mu
tual—is about as kindly all the year-
round as that at Boston College to
ward Holy Cross on the eve of the
annual football game.
And has she never heard that, old
Southern negro ballad: "All God’s
Chillun Got Shoes?” Or is she un-
Democratic enough to believe that
“God’s chillun” in the South are til.
exception rather than the rule?
After Senator Russell of Georgia in
his maiden speech (very appropriate
ly) as a senator indicated how wrong
Secretary Perkins was, Senator Bailey
of North Carolina begged permission
to direct attention to the fact that
even the mules in the South wear
shoes. “Ask the man who owns one.”
We do not make it a practice to give
out market tips in this column, but
we believe that stock bought in shoe
factories on the basis of the potential
market afforded by the number of
barefooted adults in the South is not
the most promising investment.
Despite newspapers, rapid transpor
tation, and the radio, there is still a
great deal of misinformation about
the South abroad in the land. One of
our leading Catholic publications re
cently referred to Atlanta as a city
in which there are not enough Cath
olics for a Catholic school. Atlanta
There were no Catholics among
these officials. As far as we know,
they W'ere all Protestants. Law
should flow from the conscience of
the people; to expect the conscience
of the people to flow from law is to
put the cart before the horse, and is
not and has never been successful,
even when backed by the sword. The
ghost of Cromwell could tell you.
Father John J. Toomey of the Mary-
knoll Missionaries in far away China
took a little time of St. Patrick’s
Day to send his own and Father Ken-
nelly’s Easter greetings to the editor
of The Bulletin and their other
friends in the Southeast. Father
Toomey reported that he had recent
ly, had a letter from Father Cairns at
Sancian Island, the tomb of St. Fran-;
cis Xavier, where Father Cairns is
pastor, and a part of the letter was
devoted to generous comment on The
Bulletin. The Laymen’s Association,
busy wtih its own difficult, problems,
is able to assist the missionaries in
foreign fields only by recording their
labors from time to time and by
sending The Bulletin to a few of those
it believes will find it of interest in
their lonely work. Some readers of
The Bulletin may be able to do more
for them.
Father Toomey says: “Prosit for
your apostolate of the press.”- We
appreciate his good wishes and un
failing interest. But we should like
him to know that there are some who
do not like the term “prosit,” It is
occasionally used, so we have been
told) by groups when they gather
around to drink beer. And on that
account some good people who are
so good they will not even do im
proper fractions do not like it.—R, K.