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SIX
THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN'S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA
FEBRUARY 17, 1934
THE BULLETIN
The Official Organ of the Catholic Laymen’s
Association of Georgia
RICHARD REID, Editor
815-816 Lamar Building Augusta, Georgia
Subscription Price $2.00 Per Year
Published monthly by the Publicity Department
with the Approbation of the Most. Rev. Bishops of
Raleigh, Charleston, Savannah, St. Augustine, Mobile,
Natchez and Nashville and of the Rt. Rev. Abbot,
Ordinary of Belmont.
FOREIGN ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE
George J. Callahan. 240 Broadway. New York
ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1931-1932
ALFRED M. BATTEY, Augusta ■ • • -President
J J. HAVERTY. K. S. G., Atlanta ...First Vice-President
J. B. McCALLUM, Atlanta Secretary
THOMAS S. GRAY, Augusta • • YV ’ ’IL
RICKARD REID, Augusta Publicity Director
MISS CECILE, FERRY. Augusta. Asst. Publicity Director
Vol. XV.
before he is a senior, it ought to be obvious to all where
the error lies as between the teachings of the Catholic
Church and the theories of science where there is con
flict.
The Church demands that theories be proved before
she accepts them. Perhaps one out of every thousand
new theories lives to be revealed as a fact. Because
the Church does not accept the nine hundred and
ninety-nine which are never proved, nor the thousandth
until it is demonstrated to be a fact, the unthinking say
she is “opposed to science”. As a matter of fact, the
Church’s attitude is that of all true science, and true
scientists so regard it.
February 17, 1934.
No. 2
Entered as second class matter June 15, 1921, ;at the Post
Office at Augusta, Ga., under act of March, 1879. Ac
cepted for mailing at special rate of postage Provided
for in Section 1103, Act. of October 3, 1917, authorized
September 1„ 1921.
The Best Defense Is No Defense
Dixie Masings
T HE best defense thus far advanced of Governor
Rolph’s approval of the California lynching is that
two wrongs make a right. And this best defense is no
defense at all.
The lynching “was murder”, The Monitor, official or
gan of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, asserts editorial
ly. “Only God can cleanse the soul from the blot of
murder; certainly not Governor Rolph who has unlaw,
fully called down this hideous stain upon the sovereign
ty of California, which by his neglect and irrational ut
terances he has abdicated.”
The murder of Brooke Harte by Thurmond and Holmes
was extraordinary in its cold-blooded cruelty, says The
Tidings, official organ of the Diocese of Los Angeles and
Monterey, “but even that is no excuse for the warm wel
come that our Governor gave the mob violence raising
its ugly head after thirteen years in a civilized state .. . .
The Governor has done a great deal to destroy the sa
cred authority of which the people of the state made him
the repository. The judicious will continue to grieve
long after the emotions of the mob are forgotten.’
Georgia and the Southeast can ill afford to point the
finger of scorn to California, the spirit of which ap
pears to be in no way reflected by the unfortunate
stand of its governor. Our governors, however, have
done nothing which Governor Rolph may cite as a
precedent, and responsible pubUc opinion is resolutely
set against lynching, a crime which the ■ editor of the
Macon Telegraph in an address recently described as
uncivilized. Some segments of our population are out
of sympathy with the attitude of our leaders on the
subject, but public opinion is gradually diminishing the
size of that segment.
Mistaken Identity
P IERRE VAN PASSEN’S syndicated column, publish
ed in The Atlanta Constitution among other
newspapers, is always interesting and sometimes start
ling. Skipping around the world as he does, and mix
ing discussions of the Irish Republic with Russian fi
nance and Turkish art, he sometimes leaves his read
ers a trifle bewildered.
In a recent contribution he discussed monastic life
at Mt. Athos in Greece. He told of seeing young
monks voluntarily chained in putrid cells to rotting
corpses, “Fifty per cent of the young monks who
chain themselves up voluntarily to dead monks die be
fore the third year is up. For in the third year the
dead man’s bones are removed. Of those who survive
this ordeal, ninety per cent are either insane or idiotic
thereafter.”
Some of our readers desire to know if Mr. Van Pas-
sen has his facts right, and if he has, why the Catho
lic Church allows such practices. Whether Mr. Van
Passen has his facts correct or not we do not know, but
we do know that the Catholic Church is not responsi
ble for these practices. For the monks at Mt. Athos
are not our Catholic monks.
Mr. Van Passen may say that he did not state they
were our monks. But when men and women of av
erage intelligence among his readers assume from what
he wrote that he was discussing our monks, he can
not avoid the logical conclusion.
The Illiberal “Liberals”
. Father Hubbard, the Jesuit explor
er of the Arctic, recently told a Prov
idence audience that Alaska is the
most wonderful country in the world,
but his argument leaves us cold.
*■
Almost as cold as the weather of
the past week-end. But that weather
in a way got us all hot and bothered.
The executive board of the Cath
olic Press Association generally meets
in New York or Chicago. Why, we
asked, should it meet where the win
try blasts dance with glee at the
thought of the feet they nip and the
ears they freeze? Why should it not
meet down in sunny Georgia, where
spring spends tl|e winter?
There being no reason to the con
trary, down to Augusta the members
of the executive board came. For
the first part of the week the sun
smiled its loveliest. Friday, when the
board meeting started, it began to
sulk. Saturday it went into complete
retirement, and the elements gave
their most diabolic performance since
the war. Temperature 34 degrees at
noon. Stores closed at mid-after-
noon. Sunday it was still worse.
Fog. Rain. Cold. Sleet, Ice. Snow.
Sunday night the members of the
board left for their homes, scattered
from St. Paul to New York. Monday
the sun returned from its spree. Mon
day afternoon there were so many
robins on the golf course that they
interfered with the play of the golf
ers, according to no less veracious an
authority than Dr. William Lyon
Phelps.
Is our face red? _ Not at all. Last
summer we were in St. Paul, Chi
cago and New York. In New York
the thermometer registered ninety-
eight, in Chicago one hundred and
two, in St. Paul one hundred and
four. We were just repaying our dis
tinguished contemporaries from St.
Paul, Chicago and New York and
other members of the executive board
in their own coin.
Scientists are excited about the in
vention at Harvard of the mechanical
nose, but there is a greater demand
these days for mechanical yes’s. Even
outside Hollywood.
men’s Association and at one time a
priest on the Missions in South Caro
lina and Florida, was a prohibition
ist. At one time he appeared before
a committee in opposition to opening
a saloon.
“It’s too near our school”, he said.
“Monsignor Foley would be opposed
to a saloon anywhere,” the brewer
raid.
“No,” said Monsignor Foley, “I
would not oppose a saloon on the cor
ner of White and Brown streets,”
naming a point opposite the mansion
of the brewer, who appreciated the
joke, even if it was on himself.
Professor Fisher of Yale, has pick
ed 19 people who he says under
stand money. All we have ever heard
it say is goodbye.
Monsignor Smith in the Denver
Register says that the World War cost
the United States government $37,-
873,908,000 net, up to June 30, 1930. The
war against depression is much more
important.
“Babe” Ruth has accepted a cut of
$17,000 dollars in his salary this year.
We may be poor and all that, but
there are few of us who would stand
for a similar cut.
Father George Scott, son of The
Bulletin’s friend, Mr. Joseph Scott of
California, has returned from Mexico
with the Los Angeles Chamber of
Commerce. “Because of the anti
clerical laws of Mexico Father Scott
■was obliged to wear lay garments
while in Mexico.” Time, the news
magazine, was barred from Mexico
because of criticism of acts of of
ficials there. Yet these Mexican of
ficials who prohibit the wearing of
clerical garb and forbid criticism of
their actions call themselves “lib
erals” and those who call themselves
“liberals” in this country are then-
loudest defenders.
There’s a Reason
T HE RELIGIOUS BULLETIN of the University of
Notre Dame is continually hitting the mark with an
accuracy and a forcefulness that shatter the target.
“There’s a history behind every rule”, at Notre Dame
it said recently. “Seniors begin to suspect as much be
fore they leave Notre Dame, but freshmen find it hard
to believe.”
Several examples are given. For instance: The faculty
allows ten “cuts”, or absences from classes. The school
is deserted before and after holidays; the only ones who
remain are those who used up their “cuts” during the
football season. Then come January colds, and the au
thorities are stormed for excuses for illness. The next
year the quota goes down to three cuts.
Again: A rector gives a liberal interpretation to the
rule on radios. The crowd gathers at the loudest radio.
The awakening comes when the marks appear. Strict
supervision of radioes goes into effect.
The Church has its freshmen, who do not understand
the necessity of rules, and its seniors, who do. Catholics
are forbidden to join certain organizations, and permitted
to join others. Ths Church has found that membership
in the forbidden organizations endangers faith, or is
otherwise objectionable. There is a basis for every other
regulation. In the Church, as at Notre Dame, there s
a reason behind every rule.”
( ( T IBERALS” whose hobby is attacking the Catholic
I Church should be interested in Chesterton’s re
cent statement, with evidence, that “every Catholic en
joys more freedom in Catholicism than any liberal does
under Bolshevism or Fascism,. I might have been a
liberal and belonged to the Centrum in Germany or the
Partito Popolare in Italy (parties composed of Catholics);
it is not the Church but the State that would stop me.
For the State has returned with all its ancient terrors of
antiquity; with the gods of the city thundering from the
sky, and marching in the pageant in iron panoply, the
ghosts of a hundred tyrants; and we have begun to un
derstand in what wide fields and playgrounds of liberty
the Faith tfcat made us free has so long allowed us to
wander and to play.”
The choice exhibit of the “liberals has been Russia,
where the exercise of the right of free speech, about
which “liberals” declaim so eloquently may draw a
ticket for Siberia or an early morning engagement be
fore a firing squad, and where they are equally in tole
rant of the existence of other rights, freedom of con
science, for instance.
Yet communists in this country denounce our govern
ment for not allowing them greater liberty that our own
laws allow American citizens. Their attitude is further
illustrated by their vicious attack on a peaceful protest
parade of Ukranians arranged in New York to direct at
tention to the treatment of the Ukranians by the Soviet
Republic.
T
Truth Has One Criterion
D R. ARTHUR H. COMPTON, Nobel Prize winner in
1927, and a member of the faculty of the Univer^-
sity of Chicago, in a recent interview declared that
“science can have no quarrel with a religion which pos
tulates a God to whom men are as His children”, a
statement which the New York Times says editorially
“will be as tidings of great joy to many.’
“Tidings of great joy” not because it 6dds one iota to
the truth of religion, but because it is another indica
tion of recognition in scientific circles of the fact that
true religion and true science cannot conflict, and
where there appears to be conflict it is because one or
the other is not true.
With the Catholic Church teaching the same doctrines
today as in Apostolic days, with these doctrines com
manding the respect and devotion of many of the great
est scientific minds of this as of every preceding age
*nd generation, and with science changing its theories
M fast that a freshman’s text book becomes obsolete
A “Quack” Remedy
'HREE hundred and eighty-six families have been
removed from a poverty-stricken block in New York
to make room for model apartments. ,
They are families such as a certain type of social work
er cites in an endeavor to justify birth control.
A news story in a recent issue of the New York Times
says that four of the families have fourteen members
each, six have ten members, ten have nine members,
nineteen have eight members, twenty-seven have seven
members, others have fewer.
Fifty-six families of the three hundred and eighty-six,
or less than one in seven, therefore, had seven members,
or more including the parents and in some cases grand
parents or other adult relatives.
Three hundred and thirty out of the three hundred
and eighty-six families had five children or less. No
statistics on these families are given, but it is assumed
that many of them had none or one or two children.
But the economic situation of these three hundred and
thirty families, with a maximum of six children and per
haps with an average of half that number, is such that
they find it necessary to live in what the New York
Times calls the slums. ,
Prescinding from the moral aspects of the case, it is
evident that the solution of the poverty of these families
and the slums in which they live is not to be found in
birth control. . . , , j
Father Bernard O’Reilly of St.
Louis, in his syndicated articles for
the Catholic Press, says that it is the
right of citizens to start defense
movements for accused persons, but
the results in the Mooney, Sacco-
Vanzetti and Scottsboro cases reveal
them to be anything but effective. If
the effort to aid the accused is sin
cere, some more efficacious method
should be sought, he says.
In the Scottsboro case, the prose
cuting attorneys got more effective
assistance from no one more than
from the “defense movement” attor
neys, who appeared to be more con
cerned with publicity for themselves
than any assistance they could render
the defendants.
The best argument against miracles,
says a sceptic, is that they do not hap
pen. He means that the best argu
ment is that he says they do not hap
pen. The best argument for them is
that they do happen.
Miss Emma Troy, a young English
woman, three years ago went to
Lourdes after being bedridden for
four years She returned from the
shrine completely cured. In Decem
ber she became a Sister of Mercy at
St. Anne’s Convent, Newcastle-on-
Tyne.
The Medical Bureau at Lourdes has
confirmed as miraculous the complete
cure of Father Lochet, who was in the
advanced stages of tuberculosis from
being gassed in the World War—he
had received one hundred per cent
disability allowance—and of Achille
Billiet, who had a running sore for
four years.
The latest about the native of Ire
land up for his citizen’s papers con
cerns the RFC.
‘Do you know what RFC stands
for?” the judge asked.
“Yes, your honor, Reverend Father
Coughlin.”
There’s one thing Father Coughlin
doesn’t stand for, and that’s criticism
of President Roosevelt.
The Southern Messenger, San
Antonio, Texas, reprints with ap
proval and emphasis The Bulletin’s
advice that none of us get. excited
over the difference of opinion be
tween Governor Smith and Father
Coughlin. Neither has denied an
article of faith.
Sex education is another panacea
which is beginning to get a long over
due layoff which ought to be made a
permanent vacation. Dr. Elizabeth
Whitney, .consultant in mental
hygiene at Stanford University, says
that “the results of sex education
have not realized the high hopes
entertained for it. There is more un
happiness in marriage and more con
fusion in relationship between men
and women than ever before.” Dr.
Whitney in her talk, made in Chicago
before the American Student Health
Association, deplored the movement
for general sex education, declaring
it “has let loose a flood of talk, until
sexuality has become an obsession.”
Which is another way of saying
that the Catholic Church was right in
its attitude toward “sex education
when it pointed out that the immoral
sections of the community were the
best informed on the subject, and that
the result was more alarming than
convincing.
Franklin P. Glass, publisher of the
Montgomery Advertiser, who died in
January, was one of the most vigor
ous opponents of the campaign of
bigotry against Governor Smith in
1928. Alabama, like South Carolina,
Georgia and Mississippi in the South
east, it will be recalled, voted for
Governor Smith.
The late Monsignor Michael Foley
of Baltimore, • friend of the Lay-
Dr. Robert Underwood Johnson,
ambassador to Italy, director of the
Hall of Fame, and distinguished au
thor, is anything but enthusiastic
about the recognition of Russia.
“Having recognized tho Soviets”, Dr.
Johnson said, “the business of our
government now is to watch them.
They are subtle in their methods and
never keep faith. The consulates they
will now establish all over the United
States will, I believe, be used as
centers of subversive propaganda by
the Third Internationale.”
The Rev. James F. Bullitt, uncle
of William C. Bullitt, United States
Ambassador to the Soviet Republic,
and an archdeacon of the Episcopa
lian Church, asserts that the United
States “disgraced itself by establish
ing realtions with Russia, a country
which is beyond the pale—a pari all
among nations.”
“Russia,” says Dr. Bullitt, “did not
keep its promises not to spread So
viet propaganda in England and
France, and I see no reason to believe
it will make an exception of us.”
An epidemic of stomach aches in a
certain city recently was attributed
by physicians to a political campaign.
Most political campaigns give one a
pain in the neck.
The “fugitive from the Georgia
chain gang” whom New Jersey re
fused to extradite to Georgia, was
arrested in New Jersey recently and
charged with disorderly conduct, im
proper registration and driving with
out a license. “He complained that
the patrolman who arrested him had
served him with 15 summonses dur
ing the past year for alleged infrac
tions of the traffic regulations,” the
New York Times said.
The Governor of Georgia said at
the time New Jersey refused to ex
tradite the fugitive that he wished
New Jersey no worse luck than that
it should have to keep him.
“Harvard Liberal Demands Ouster
of Senator Huey Long,” says an At-
lanta Constitution headline. The ^ lib
eral” is a Harvard junior and sec
retary of the Harvard Liberal Club.
His telegram to Senator' David 1.
Walsh read: “The good government
of America and the dignity of tne
United States Senate demand the im
mediate expulsion of Senator Huey
Long and his henchman, Overton.
This again raises the question:
“What is a liberal?” Hardly a man
who demands a Senator’s expulsion
because he ruffles ‘t‘he dignity of the
1 United States Senate.”—R. R.