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FEBRUARY 17, 1934
THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA
SEVEN
FEBRUARY IS CATHOLIC PRESS MONTH
C.P. A. President Appeals
for Increased Support for
All Catholic Publications
Calls Upon Laity in U. S. to Increase Activity and Thus
Give a “Quickening Impulse to Catholic Action”—Cites
Interest of Holy Father and Bishops of America
BY RICHARD REID
President, Catltolic Press Association
and Editor, The Bulletin,
Augusta, Ga.
(Written for N. C. W. C, News
Service)
It is no mere coincidence that our
present Holy Father, Pius XI, “the
Pope of Catholic Action,” is likewise
•the Pope of the Catholic Press.” For
the Catholic Press is the coordinating
medium of the Holy Father’s Catholic
Action program, even as the hierar
chy is its coordinating head.
The Catholic Press is more than the
coordinating medium. Effective
Catholic Action requires a Catholic
laity well informed on the teaching of
the Church, on current Catholic acti
vities, on the application of Catholic
teaching to current problems. It re
quires Catholic leaders distinguished
by their grasp of this information,
and zealous to extend its blessed in
fluence.
The Catholic Press, which the Holy
Father says does not merely make his
voice heard, “but is my voice itself,”
is the most potent means of develop
ing such an informed laity and com
petent lay leadership. Since the Holy
Father calls it his voice it must be
likewise the voice of the hierarchy
and therefore a principal medium of
communication between them and the
laity. It is the laity’s school after
school days, which are but a small
fraction of the average life and end
just when life in society commences.
It amplifies a hundred fold the fif
teen minute discourse from the pul
pit on Sunday. It brings the Catho
lic world into every home it enters,
however otherwise that home maybe
isolated.
Should one not,realize the impor
tance of the Catholic Press, let him
consider the Holy Father’s interest in
and assistance to it, despite all but
overwhelming demands on his tune
and strength. Let him moreover con
sider our own Bishops in the United
States establishing a News Service to
serve our Catholic publications at a
time when there were a dozen com
pelling pleas for every dollar of
which they are stewards. And finally
let him consider the self-sacrificing
zeal of prelates, priests and laymen
who spurn tempting opportunities in
other fields in order to devote them
selves to the mission of defending and
spreading the faith by means of the
Catholic Press.
The power of the printed word is
so obvious now that the old-fashion
ed debate on the pen and sword is
but a memory. It is unfortunately
true, however, that Catholics hav not
fully utilized this Aieans of apostle-
shin. It is estimated that European
Catholics, with their flourishing
dailies in Holland, France, Germany
and Austria, give only one per cent
of their activities to the Catholic
Press. American Catholics give at
best no more.
But fortunately this situation is
changing. Each recurring Catholic
Press Month gives heartening indica
tions that our American Catholics are
becoming more and more Catholic-
Press-conscious; they are becoming
increasingly cognizant of the excel
lence of the Catholic Press, of its pre
sent power, and of its potential influ
ence when their full support shall
be given to this medium which is the
voice of the Holy Father himself.
It is the hope and prayer of all in
terested not in the Catholic Press
merely but in the future of the
Church that the 1934 appeal of the
Bishops of the United States, voiced
for the hierarchy by the Most Rev.
Hugh C. Boyle, Bishop of Pittsburg,
Chairman of the Department of Press
of the National Catholic Welfare Con
ference, will result in a substantial in
crease in the number of Catholics in
this nation adequately fulfilling their
three duties to the Catholic Press,
supporting, reading and spreading
it.
If, instead of the less than one per
cent of their activities it is estimated
American Catholics devote to the
Catholic Press, they will devote the
equivalent of two per cent, without
of course curtailing their other Cath
olic activities, the deepening of the
information of the laity and the ac
celerated development of Catholic
leadership will give such quickening
impulse to Catholic Action, so dear to
the heart of the Holy Father, as to
have most profund effect not merely
on the welfare of*the Church in our
country but on the well-being of the
nation as a whole.
And who will say that it is a vain
hope to expect American Catholic to
increase to such modest proportions
their activity for this most potent
auxiliary of the Church?
Childless Homes and money, too
Much or too little, are the principal
causes of divorce, Judge Frank L.
Baldwin of the Domestic Relations
Court in Mahoning County, Ohio,
asserts.
Hort. David I. Walsh
Expresses Thanks to
Laymen’s Association
In Accepting Post of Hon
orary Vice-President, to
Which C. L. A. Named Him
Hon. David I. Walsh, Senior
United States Senator from Mass
achusetts, who has twice honored
conventions of the Catholic Lay
men’s Association of Georgia by
..addressing them—in Macon in
1927 and Atlanta in 1931—and who
was elected an honorary vice-
president at the recent Macon
convention, writes to the Associa-
ion accepting the honor accorded
him, and says:
‘It is a distinct privilege to be
an associate in the glorious work
this Association is doing.. I sin
cerely appreciate the action taken
by the Association, extend my
best wishes to the officers and
members, and assure you of my
constant interest in the activities
of the Catholic Laymen's Associa
tion of Georgia.”
Dr. Butter Fighting
Child Labor Measure
Proposed Amendment Peril
to Family, He Says
(By N. C. W. C. News Service)
NEW YORK.—Continuing his at
tack upon the Child Labor Amend
ment, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler,
in an address delivered over station
WEAF, here, asserted that the pro
posal “is one more attempt of senti
mental emotionalism to write for us
restrictive and controlling statutes
which woulcl open the door to a
complete revolution in our family
and social life and in the education
of our children.”
Declaring that in almost every re
spect the proposal is similar to the
Eighteenth Amendment, Dr. Butler
said that the. measure would be sub
versive of the American form of gov
ernment, the home, the family, and
the church. “It is no use to tell
us that the purpose of this amend
ment,” he said, “is merely to give a
certain grant of power to the con
gress and that the congress would
never dream of authorizing any of
these objectionable features. Experi
ence has taught us otherwise. There
is no reason why the people of the
United States should take any chance
in this matter, for there is nothing
to be gained and everything to be
lost thereby. The people have found
other ways and means to get rid of
child labor without undermining their
form of government.”
Dr. Butler cited as others who op
pose the amendment on the same
grounds Dr. A. Lawrence Lowell,
president emeritus of Harvard, for
mer Governor Alfred E. Smith, and
Clarence E. Martin, president of the
American Bar Association. Bishop
Floersh of Louisville and Msgr. Peter
Blessing, administrator of the Diocese
of Louisville, have also criticized the
measure in recent days.
MISS MARY FRANCES HALL,
Catholic World War Worker, who
served in the A. E. F., with the
Knights of Columbus, and also with
the Construction Division of the War
Deportment, is directing arrange
ments for the national radio broad
cast of the Women’s Overseas Ser
vice League Monday, February 26.
To the Clergy and Faithful
of the Diocese of Savannah
The month of February of each year is designated as
Catholic Press Month, and, at this time, special efforts are
being made to impress upon our Catholic people the im
portance of supporting Catholic Papers and Magazines.
The necessity of sustaining this branch of Catholic Ac
tion ought to be apparent to every Catholic, but if any
one has doubts, let him heed the voice of our Holy Fath-
er, who, in the performance of his august duties as the
Vicar of Christ on Earth, said, on one occasion, in ad
dressing editors of Catholic Papers: “You are my voice.
I do not say that you make my voice heard, but that you
are really my voice itself.” And, again, “Anything which
you will do for the Catholic Press I will consider as hav
ing been done for me personally. The Catholic Press is
close to my heart and 1 expect very much from it.”
We in Georgia are fortunate in having a Catholic
Paper that we are sure is close to the heart of our Holy
Father. The Catholic Laymen’s Association, and its
organ, “The Bulletin”, edited by the President of the
Catholic Press Association, deserve the loyal support of
our people. The Association was organized to spread
the truth concerning our Church at a time when we were
sorely tried by prejudice against our Church, due to ig
norance of her teachings. The work of nearly eighteen
years in dissipating this ignorance and its consequent
prejudice should not now be lost because of lack of sup
port.
We, therefore, urge all of our people to respond as
generously as they can to the invitation that, in a short
time, will he given them to contribute to the mainten
ance of the Association and The Bulletin for another
year. By doing this they will work most assuredly for
the greater glory of God and for the preservation and
spreading of the Kingdom of His Divine Son in our Be
loved Georgia.
-4- YLuJUd j •
Bishop of Savannah.
Tide of Protest Against Vile
Motion Pictures Still Rising
Religious and Civic Organi
zations Act to Cleanse
Screen of Immoral Films
Tlie rising tide of protest against
tlie immoral motion pictures with
which the theatres are flooded con
tinues to rise, as indicated by re
ports from every section of the coun
try.
THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE, one
of the leading secular newspapers
in Texas and the South, vigorously
denounced current motion pictures
editorially, and then, replying to a
complaint that it had pictured the pic
tures as being worse than they real
ly were, recalled that they were thus
pictured by their own press agent,
“so the error, if any, still seems to
rest with “-016 management.” Bishop
Byrne of Galveston has been particu
larly active i nthe campaign against
immoral films.
BISHOP CANTWELL of Los An
geles and San Diego in an article in
The Ecclesiastical Review, asserts that
“some action of heroic proportions
must be taken if we are to save the
youth of America from a pollution
and debauchery through the motion
pictures, the like of which America
has never known. In vain do we
rear great educational institutions if
the invidious character of the cinema
is permitted to prostitute the char
acter of our adolescent youth.” Bishop
Cantwell attributes the situation net
to public taste but to the fact that
"there are too many of the wrong
kind of people engaged in the produc
tion end of the motion picture in
dustry.”
CLEVELAND has formed a Civic
Association to campaign against in
decency in the motion pictures and
on the stage. Mrs. William S. Houck,
president of the Cleveland Deanery of
the National Council of Catholic
Women, is president. The Federated
Churches, the Y. M. C. A. and the
Federation of Women’s Clubs are
identified with the movement.
SAVANNAH barred the “nudist”
picture after a board of review vetoed
its showing, the manager of the the
ater withdrawing it when the board
expressed its disapproval and oppo
sition.
KANSAS, in response to numerous
protests made to public officials, has
0-
C. P. A. ACTS TO LIFT
MOVIES’ MORAL TONE
Tlie executive board of the
Catholic Press Association of
the United States, meeting at
Augusta, Ga., Friday and Sat
urday of last week, arranged
for a motion picture story con
test calculated to improve the
moral tone of the screen and
to encourage young writers.
Tlie contest will be conducted'
by the Literary Awards Foun
dation of the Catholic Press
Association, of which the Rev.
Wilfrid Parsons, S.J., of the
Literature Bureau, is chair
man. Three prizes totaling one
thousand dollars will be
awarded.
Bulletins
(By N. C. W. C. News Service)
CANADIANS to the number of
over one-third of the population are
Catholics, the most recent census re
ports. There are 4,285,388 Catholics,
2,849,095 of them of French origin,
practically all of them members of
families coming to Canada in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
FATHER LUDWIG, a young Do
minican priest in China, has been
killed by bandits near Tingehow, ac
cording to word received by the
Maryknoll Fathers in New York.
WILLIAM BLAND, retired officer
of the English Air Ministry, has been
received into .the Church at the Ab
bey on Caldey Island, in England.
. .FATHER FINN, director of the fa
mous Paulist choir, was conducting
a program for the Richmond Catholic
Hour observance when informed that
his mother, Mrs. Anna Hussey Finn,
of Boston, had just died.. She was
the widow of Dr. James A. Finn, of
Boston.
ADALBERTO TEJEDA, formerly
Governor of Vera Cruz announces
in his campaign for the presidency
that he has always defended and re
spected liberty of conscience”, but
that he understands by liberty of
conscience freedom from the teach
ings of the Catholic Church and that
he, therefore, is unyielding in his de
mands for the enforcement of the
anti-Catholic laws of Mexico.
THE LOCIJ NESS MONSTER is an
animal which has lived in the Scot
tish Loch for years and has been dis
turbed by blasting, in the opinion
of the Rt. Rev. Sir David Oswald
Hunter-Blair. O. S. B., titular Abbot
of Dunfermiline. The loch, where
the animal has been seen is near
the Benedictine Abbey at Fort Au
gustus.
THE PAULIST CHOIR during its
visit to Richmond sang before a spe
cial joint session of the Virginia Leg
islature.
DOM GEORGE BEDE COX, an
English Benedictine priest for 53
years, has been elected titular Abbot
of Glastonbury.
AN EARTHQUAKE in the Patna
Missions, India, territory, which is in
charge of the American Jesuits, has
destroyed most of the churches. The
Most Rev. Bernard Sullivan, S. J., is
Bishop of Patna.
TRINITY COLLEGE’S Alumnae
Association has formed a national
committee on Catholic Action, with
Miss Elizabeth W. Loughran, of Bos
ton, as chairman.
FATHER JOSEPH ROSSBERGER,
regent of the Catholic Boys’ Semi
nary in Freising, near Munich, has
been sentenced to eight months in
jail because of remarks derogatory
to the present German government
he is alleged to have made.
THE DECLINE in birth rate and
similar trends “contain within them
all the elements of racial disaster”.
Dr. W. L. Hutton, president of the
Eugenics Society of Canada, declar
ed in his address at the annual con
vention at Toronto.
taken measures to enforce the laws
against immoral motion pictures vig
orously.
DETROIT has reacted to the Fed
eration of Women’s Clubs movement
against objectionable motion pictures
by an official order to its police de
partment to see that the law is strict
ly obeyed. Detroit has an official
censor of motion pictures.
THE TEXAS Catholic Daughters of
America have launched a movement
to have members of the orderxremain
away from all motion pictures until
the theatres clean up their programs.
ARCHBISHOP O’DONNELL o f
Halifax has taken the lead in Nova
Scotia’s protest against immoral mo
tion pictures. He concentrates his
criticism against the “higher ups,”
scoring the producers, distributors
and exhibitors of the films.
THE MICHIGAN CHAPTER of the
International Federation of Catholic
Alumnae has organized to improve
the moral tone of the motion pic
tures and plays, particularly by re
fraining from patronizing theatres ex
hibiting objectionable films.
THE CATHOLIC STUDENTS’ MIS
SION CRUSADE is sponsoring a sim
ilar movement, according to an article
in Hie Shield, the official organ of
the Crusade. _
THE MICHIGAN CATHOLIC, of
ficial organ of the Diocese of Detroit,
says that “ with non-Catholics and
Catholics taking action, there should
result at least some abatement of this
corruption of adults as well as
youths.”
MISS THERESE B A T T Q U E
Fiance's oldest woman, died late in
January at the age of 108, and was
buried from the same church at Ar-
rens in which she had been baptiz
ed. Her family is prominent in re
ligious and secular history; her
father was mayor of the commune
for thirty-two years.
THE TECHNY FATHERS, Fath
ers of the Divine Word of Techny,
111., have baptized 24,308 persons dur
ing the past twelve months in the
Little Sunda Islands, Dutch East
Indies, w’here 60 missionaries of the
Society are laboring.
ONE PRIEST is all that is permit
ted by the law in Zacatecas, capital
of the state of that name in Mexico.
Thirteen are authorized by law in
the State of Vera Cruz, but the Gov
ernor refuses to approve the names
of any, thereby suspending services.
FATHER LEO WARD, son of Car
dinal Newman’s biographer and
grandson of W. G. Ward, a contem
porary of Newman in the Oxford
movement, is laboring as a mission
ary in Japan.
SEVERAL PRIESTS in Germany
have been arrested for alleged re
marks derogatory to the Hitler gov
ernment; some have received jail
sentences, including Father Karl
Klinkhammer, of Essen, Father Peter
Erode sser, Essan, Father M. Stender,
of Heuthen, Eichsfelc 1 ., and Father Jo
seph Rossberger, Freising.
MISS LI HSEUH HSIA. a Chinese
scholar at St. Elizabeth’s College,
New Jersey, was baptized in the Col
lege Chapel February 2. Miss LI *
came to St. Elizabeth’s in February,
1933. after a year and a half at
Yencbing University, China.