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SIX
THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA MARCH 23, 1935
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
w** 1 . the Approbation of the Most. Rev. Bishops of
Raleigh Charleston, Savannah, St. Augustine and Nash-
ville and of the Rt. Rev. Abbot. Ordinary of Belmont.
FOREIGN ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE"
George J. Callahan. 240 Broadway. New York
ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1934-1935
ALFRED M. BATTEY, Augusta President
j ^nAVER^.K. so, Atlanta ...First'Vice^^d^t
J. B. McCALLUM, Atlanta Secretary
THOMAS S. GRAY, Augusta Treasurer
RICHARD REID, Augusta Publicity Director
MISS CECILS. FERRY. Augusta A^t. PubhcUy Dhertor
No. XVI.
March 23. 1935
No. 3
Member of N. C. W. C. News Service the Catholic Press
Association of the United States, the Georgia Press
Association and the National Editorial Association.
Entered as second class matter June 15, 1921, at the Post
° ** Aueurta. 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 Eternal City Comes to Us
T HE time for gaining the jubilee indulgence, a
privilege extended to the whole world by the
Holy Father, ends with Lent. Our Most Rev. Bishop
and the Bishops of the Southeast have announced the
conditions for the gaining of the indulgence; these con
ditions and requirements are posted in the various
churches.
A year ago hundreds of thousands of persons journey-
ed from the far ends of the earth to Rome cm Holy
Year pilgrimages in order to gain the indulgence. The
Holy Father now graciously makes this indulgence
available to all those who were not able to make the
pilgrimage to Rome.
When one journeys to Rome on a Holy Year pilgrim
age, one realizes the value of an indulgence, gained at
such sacrifice and expense. When the same indulgence
may be gained at home, without any perceptible incon
venience or sacrifice, and at no expense, we are prone
to undervalue it.
But the same authority, that of the Vicar of Christ,
which proclaimed the Holy Year and the indulgences at
tached to it, extends it to the entire world. Catholics
have an opportunity to make the Lent of 1935 a notable
one in the pilgrimage of their souls toward their final
goal by gaining the jubilee indulgence for the remission
of the punishment of the sins they have committed, and
the flooding of their souls with divine grace.
You Can Answer This Call
T HE BULLETIN would be ungrateful if it did not
express its appreciation of the generous assistance
given it during Catholic Press Month.
The Catholic Press Month letter of our Most Rev.
Bishop and his request that the pastors direct the at
tention of their people to the Catholic Press, with special
reference to The Bulletin; the wholehearted cooperation
of the pastors and clergy of the Diocese, and the splen
did and effective sermons they delivered, and the gen
erous reaction of the laity all make The Bulletin and
— — —— sisters, Mrs. Katherine E. Miles of
the Catholic Laymen’s Association very grateful indeed. Savannah, and Mrs. Mary H. Wichers,
The endorsement of the Bishops of the Southeast, the f " St Ten ^
assistance of the clergy in the Carolinas, Florida and
elsewhere, and the response of our readers in the South-
“I Have Chosen You”
N EARLY every issue of The Bulletin records de
partures of priests and nuns for the missions in the
Orient, Africa, the South Sea Islands and other equally
distant fields.
Yet there are many sections of our own country in
urgent need of the ministrations of priests and nuns,
scattered Catholics and a fertile mission field of millions
who know nothing of religon.
Under such circumstances, does not the suggestion of
many good people that these priests and nuns ought to
be assigned to the home missions seem reasonable?
The answer is no.
Our Divine Lord commanded His Church to “teach
all nations whatsoever I have commanded you. And be
hold I am with you all days^even to the consummation
of the world”.
Our Divine Lord says of His religious: "You have not
chosen Me but I have chosen you." Some He chooses
for parochial work, some for home missions, some for
foreign missions. He calls them, and they respond.
There were unchurched millions in France when Fa
ther le Moine came to Georgia in the 1790’s; there were
unchurched millions when the Fathers from Lyons came
in recent years. The German priests who have labored
in the Southeast and elsewhere could have labored
among the home missions in Prussia. There no doubt
wore some in Ireland who objected that instead of going
to the United States, Bishop England and young Irish
priests with the missionary spirit ought to be assigned
to Ulster.
Fortunately these opinions did not prevail, and their
labors not only preserved the struggling Church in the
United States, but developed a native clergy to take
their places in succeeding generations. The magnificent
native clergy of the nation today is due to the self-
sacrificing zeal of these missionaries to whom the United
States was foreign soil.
Today Georgia and practically every other state in the
Union are contributing recruits to foreign missions, in
gratitude, as it were, for what such missionaries have
done for them.
God plants these vocations in the hearts of young
men and women. To criticize them for responding to the
call is not only a gratuitous intrusion and presumption,
for their lives are their own and they are endowed jWith
free will, but it is a sitting in judgment on the wishes
of the Almighty Who in His Providence thus provides for
laborers for all parts of His Vineyard.
east and beyond have also been most gratifying and
heartening.
The branches of the Catholic Laymen’s Association of
Georgia are now conducting their annual campaigns
for members. Atlanta has practically secured its quota.
Other cities are also busy. Our Bishop has expressed
the hope that every adult in Georgia be a member of
the Association. A contribution in excess of the cost of
The Bulletin makes one a member. Such contributions
may be sent either to the local officers or to the state
headquarters at Augusta, which will notify the local
officers and credit the contribution locally.
The Bulletin and the Laymen’s Association do not
confine their work to Georgia. There is not a section
of the country and particularly of the South Atlantic
States which it has not served; it never allows an in
quiry or a request for literature to go unanswered, re
gardless of its point of origin.
Although the response to the Catholic Press Month
appeal was encouraging, many have not renewed their
memberships or subscriptions. To renew them is a
Lenten resolution of great merit. While commending
the reading of the Catholic Press, it is to its supporters
that the Holy Father sends his blessing. Without sup
porters there could be no readers. Be, therefore, both
a reader and a supporter.
Dixie Musings
Our heartiest felicitations to the
Most Rev. Frederick Dunne, O. C.
S. O., formerly pastor of the Trappist
Abbey at Gethsemani, Ky., who has
been named and installed as Abbot of
Gethsemani to succeed the late Abbot
Obrecht. Our felicitations go also
to the Fathers of the Abbey, to his
Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, the ten-year-old “ward”
of the Supreme Court of New York which ordered her
custodian to have her attend Mass, is a Catholic, and the
excitement of those who see nothing to get excited
about when a court orders the custodian of a Protestant
child to have it attend religious services of the de
nomination of which the child is a member is itself
nothing to get excited about.
The Legion Marches On
T HE year 1934 was “made famous by the ‘Legion of
Decency’,” the Rev. M. M. MacFerrin, D. D., pastor
of the Green Street Presbyterian Church, said in a re
cent sermon recounting the great events of the year.
“The great Roman Catholic Church has led the way, and
others have followed with earnest effort to correct the
insidious evil of unwholesome motion pictures. To this
intolerable influence of evil has been traced the cor
ruption of youth, the inception of crime and general
moral ill health.”
The Legion of Decency commended by Dr. MacFerrin,
and to promote the purposes of which hundreds of
thousands and millions of Protestants and Jews in the
United States are cooperating, continues to make its in
fluence felt, as indicated by the character of the pic
tures now being produced.
A year ago Class C, condemned, pictures were often
in the majority in the motion picture schedule of a
city. Now week after week passes without a Class C
picture being listed, and with Class A pictures growing
in number. In many cities Class B pictures, neither
condemned nor approved, are less numerous than Class
C pictures were before the Legion of Decency effort
was inaugurated.
The continued success of the Legion of Decency de
pends on the continued cooperation of its members and
sympathizers; it depends mainly on the readers of our
Catholic publications. The Legion of Decency is per
manent; its principles are as permanent as the Com
mandments upon which they are based.
St. Leo, Fla., and to his brother
Jesse Dunne of San Antonio, Fla
As recorded in the previous issue
of The Bulletin, Abbot Frederic was
born in Oronton, O., attended Im
maculate Conception School in At
lanta, moved with his family from
Atlanta to San Antonio, Fla., and
Jacksonville, entered the Trappist
Monastery forty-one years ago, and
for twenty-one years was prior. He
has been a constant friend of The
Bulletin, and in a letter to the editor
expresses his thanks for the messages
of congratulations he has received
from his numerous friends in the
Southeast. May his years in his new
office surpass even those of his dis
tinguished predecessor, who served as
Abbot over thirty-five years.
Of the army of “boy and girl
tramps” swarming through the coun
try, “a startling number had par
ents who were divorced,” Dr. Thomas
Minehan, professor of sociology at
the University of Minnesota, told the
Open Forum of the Jacksonville
Woman’s Club in an address based
on his researches. Yet the Catholic
Church is the only organized force
opposing divorce.
The Catholic Church appears to be
the only organized force opposing
birth control and sterilization, and
it gives her small comfort to know
that eventually bitter experience will
induce those outside the Church to
come to her way of thinking on the
subject. Appalling damage will be
done the body politic in the mean
time.
Richard Washburn Child, former
United States ambassador to Italy,
and famed as an author, died re
cently in New York. Readers of The
New York Times were startled to
read that he was divorced three times,
and yet was buried from Hie Church
of St. Vincent Ferrer with a Solemn
High Mass. Some of the brethren
were scandalized.
(
It is amazing how many Catholics
immediately drop into a worrying or
critical pose when they read such
news, instead of giving the Church
authorities credit for knowing the
laws of the Church and for being as
interested in the reputation of the
Church as they.
Mass. Where they have not this op
portunity, there is an added responsi
bility on the parents, even where
there are splendid Sunday schools.
“The devil finds work for empty
hands,” and that is especially true
of little ones at Mass without prayer-
book or rosary beads.
Ernest Hemingway, the novelist,
makes his home at Key West, and is
a Catholic. But hardly a Catholic
novelist.
The Rev. E. Boyd Barrett, whom
the Jesuits took as a raw Irish lad
and gave as fine an education as the
continent of Europe affords only to
have him turn on them when the
leaping went to his head, has an
article on nuns in a recent issue of
the American Mercury, which merits
for him the contempt of every per
son, Catholic and non-Catholic, in
whom there is a sense of decency.
He calls the Little Sisters of the
Poor “panhandlers”, and the Madams
of the Sacred Heart “snobs.” That
is his starting point. The article does
not injure the Sisters. It is a mirror
of the heart of E. Boyd Barrett.
Ripley, of “Believe It Or Not” fame,
asserts that Dr. John McLaughlin,
chief factor of the Hudson Bay Com
pany, was married three times to the
same woman without an intervening
divorce. Dr. McLaughlin was a Cath
olic of note, and Ripley’s assertion
has disturbed some Catholics. We do
not see anything to be disturbed at;
Dr. McLaughlin was living in the
wilderness far from priests and civil
authorities, and under the circum
stances, a common law marriage, a
civil marriage and a religious mar
riage were neither unusual or repre
hensible. But it appears that Ripley
has stretched two such marriages to
three.
We have noted an unusual amount
of anti-Catholic matter in the mails
and in the hands of distributors re
cently, an unfailing sign of returning
prosperity. When the money becomes
more plentiful, the boys who want
to save the country from Rome by
collecting from the credulous are the
first to find it out and start opera
tions.
Had they investigated, they would
have learned that 'Mr. Child'became
a Catholic twenty-four hours before
his death, and that his baptism then
gave him the right and the Church
the obligation to have him interred
with the rites of the Church. There
may have been other altering circum
stances, such as the death of his
former wives.
The Knights of Columbus
F IFTY-FOUR years ago, the Knights of Columbus
existed only in the mind of Father McGivney and
nine of his parishoners in St. Mary’s parish in New
Haven, Conn.
Today there is hardly an intelligent person in the
United States, Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile,
who is not familiar with the organization, and practically
no section of the United States in which it is not known
by contact.
The state in the Union with the smallest Catholic
population, North Carolina, has five councils; New York
has about one hundred and sixty. There are nearly
twenty-eight hundred councils of the Order, with a total
membership in excess of 500,000.
Mere numbers do not demonstrate superiority, but
the fact that among the hundreds of thousands of men
in the ranks of the Knights of Columbus are what
Cardinal Gibbons called “the cream of the Catholic
laity” gives these numbers significance.
The record of the Knights of Columbus needs no
repetition to a group of Catholic readers. That the
Order is not living on past achievements, glorious as
they are, is indicated by its “Mobilizing for Catholic
Action” movement, now being conducted with the co
operation of every Council.
The Knights of Columbus are endeavoring to increase
their membership. Five hundred thousand members is an
impressive number, but there are many times that num
ber of Catholic men in the United States. The invita
tion of the Knights of Columbus to the Catholic man
hood of the nation to affiliate with them, an invitation
approved by the Holy Father, deserves the serious con
sideration and response of every^Catholic layman.
The Southwest Courier disposes of the loose talk
about “the foreign criminal influence” in the South
west by listing recent “public enemies” there: Bates,
Bailey, Barrow, Parker, Underhill, Hamilton, Clark,
Birdwell, Davis, Walker, Nadi and Floyd.
Anyone objecting to the Church’s
action in such a case is referred to
Him Who told the parable of the
laborers in the vineyard, and to His
statement of the answer to those who
objected that the late-comers were
paid the same as those who bore
the heat of the day, or to His words
to the penitent thief crucified by
His side.
A group of winter visitors to St.
Augustine visited the Fountain of
Youth and, like Ponce de Leon, drank
of its waters. Then next morning
one of them, a football star of over
a quarter of a century ago. went
around the hotel looking for his cap
and books to go to school.
Germany has sterilized 180,000 per
sons, and perhaps 200,000, according
to a superior court judge, writing
in the German Review of Jurispru
dence. With what results?
This propaganda is being peddled in
Boston, New York and Chicago as
well as in Atlanta, Birmingham and
New Orleans. There is only one way
to combat its influence, and that is
by a campaign of education as an
antidote, a campaign such as the
Catholic Laymen’s Association has
been conducting for nearly nineteen
years. Nine out of ten Georgians who
could be interested in anti-Catholic
literature two decades ago now are
cold to it, when they are not hot
with indignation.
The broad, general rule, says a
Georgia newspaper; is that a man is
about as big as the things that make
him mad.
Dr. Dafoe, of Dionne quintuplet
fame, is a Protestant in a Catholic
community. He secured a priest for
the mother and baptized the infants
even before he gave them medical
attention; he knew the baptismal rite
m English, French and Latin. He ap
pears to be more of a Catholic than
some Catholics.
The Catholic Chronicle of Akron,
O., does not take kindly to the po
sition of Will Rogers when he says
that you can’t have a motion picture
cast entirely Southern because every
play needs a few villains, aJld there
are no villains in the South; they
must, therefore, be imported from the
North. This, says The Chronicle,
editorially, is not funny at all, but
just plain silly.
We thought Will’s absurdity was
funny—so funny that we reprinted
it in these columns. And now, is our
face red!
His Eminence, Peter Cardinal Gas-
parri, for decades one of the most
prominent and influential figures in
the world—Papal Secretary of State
for a longer period than any other
man in history—died penniless. He
died penniless because he preferred
to die that way. Had he chosen, he
could have been a man of great
wealth from his literary efforts alone.
Wealth may be a blessing and a
means of blessings. The absence of
it in Cardinal Gasparri and many an
other churchman of genius is a work
of supererogation.
We have been asked to say some
thing about the way many children
assist at Mass. The ones we observe
ordinarily are an example to many
adults, but occasionally in our trav
els we see examples such as prompt
the request. Children in Catholic
Mcnsignor Duggan, editor of The
Hartford Catholic Transcript, wonders
what would happen to a Catholic doc
tor putting out his shinale in a Geor
gia backwoods town. Catholics who
have practiced medicine in the small
er towns of Georgia have met with
varying success, depending on their
ability, personality and background.
A Catholic physician from a county
where Catholics number one in forty
has in recent years been president
of the. Georgia Medical Association.
Catholic physicians presidents of their
county medical associations in Geor
gia and the Southeast are no nov
elty.
Life would, we know, be a bed
of roses for Monsignor Duggan’s “Dr.
O'Brien or Murphy, adherent of
Rome,” in a Connecticut backwoods
town, if there are any such in the
Nutmeg State.
The North and South have more
mutual understanding now than at
any time for over a century. We
believe that if the dominant political
party of the South were to nominate
Governor Smith again, he would car
ry more states in the North than
the two which voted for him in 1928.
The situation has changed in the
South also. From the time of “Bob”
Toombs, for instance, and Toombs’
attitude, as indicated by a story told
recently by one of Georgia’s leading
lawyers.
When Chicago was burning two
generations ago, a friend of Tombs
kept him informed of the progress of
the fire through a series of tele
grams. And Toombs passed out the
news to his Washington-Wilkes Coun
ty neighbors.
“How’s the fire going.” asked one.
‘Great,” answered the unrecon
structed Toombs. “Half the town is
gone, and the wind is in our favor.”
But the Georgian of that day whom
people of the state and the South
hold nearest to their hearts is not
Toombs the firebrand, but Henry
Grady, who went about this great
broken country seeking to bind up
and heal the wounds left by the
me request, c-nuoren m Latnolic and heal the wounc
schools are taught how to assist at I strife of the ’60's.—R.
R.