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EIGHT THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN'S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA FEBRUARY 29, 1936 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 and Nash- ville and of the Rt Rev Abbot, Ordinary of Belmont. ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1935-1936 ALFRED M. BATTEY. Augusta President J. J. HAVERTY, K. S. G., Atlanta ...First Vice-President J. B. McCALLUM, Atlanta Secretary THOMAS S. GRAY. Augusta Treasurer RICHARD REID. Augusta Publicity Director MISS CECILE. FERRY Augusta. Asst. Publicity Director Vol. XVII. February 29, 1936, 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. A Glorious Pontificate I N THIS, the month of the Catholic Press, the Pope of the Catholic Press starts the fifteenth year of a Pon tificate which is destined to be treasured forever in the memory of the Church in a special way. In his first Encyclical, Ubi Arcano Dei, the Holy Father pleaded for the promotion of the “Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ”, and that has been the consuming desire of His Holiness in the intervening years. Three times since the coronation of His Holiness has he by virtue of the power of his august office released extraordinary floods of grace through Holy Years; “his glorious Pontificate,” says His Excellency, the Apostolic Delegate, “has been made even more glorious by the great number of canonizations and beatifications through which he has offered for our veneration and our imitation new models of sancity taken from every walk of life.” The Encyclicals of His Holiness on the Condition of Labor, on Marriage and the Family, on the Extension of Missionary Work, on the Priesthood have given new vigor to the Church to the furthermost ends of the earth. His settlement of the Roman Question alone would make his Pontificate one of profound achieve ment. From his vantage point by the Tiber, the Holy Father looks out over a world distressed by manifold difficul ties, distraught by conflicting interests, afflicted by suf ferings for which he as the Visible Head of the Church has the only solution. There is much in the world to day to discourage those who seek “the Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ”, but the loyalty of sons and daughters of the Church to the Holy See is a redeeming and heartening circumstance. May their prayers united with those of the Holy Father open the ears and hearts of those in the places of the mighty to the salutary mes sages of peace and concord voiced by the Vicar of Christ, the Father of Christendom. Pay Day Is Here 4 4 r T -, HE wages of sin is death,' and economic evils A follow moral wrongs just as certainly as physi cal disasters flow from lives of dissipation. These are facts the Church has ever proclaimed most emphatically, and history has demonstrated most vividly. The Church is still proclaiming them and history is still furnishing the evidence. Not merely the history of fallen empires but the record of current events as re cent as today’s newspapers. The Church denounces “birth control” as a sin, with the usual wages attached. Recent stories in the press present the evidence. The New York newspapers of February 4, for instance, carried statistics presented by Dr. John L. Rice, Commissioner of Health, in an ad dress before the Metropolitan Certified Milk Producers, Inc., at the Roosevelt Hotel. The milk producers were complaining about accelerated curtailment in the demand for their product. . In 1915, there were 140,000 births in New York City, Dr. Rice said. Last year, with a population of at least 1,500,000 greater, the births were 40.000 less. The birth rate is dropping from year to year, he asserted, and this is the major explanation of the decrease in demand for certified milk from 40,000 quarts daily in 1931, two years after the depression began, to 25,000 in 1935. That this is not an isolated example is indicated from other items in newspapers. A large New England city reports that it must consolidate classes in the lower grades of several of its schools because of a falling off in the number of children; the teachers are worried about their jobs. A similar situation prevails in numerous other places where the number of families shows no decline. The Savannah Press editorially states that twelve states had lower birth rates than the cur tailed figure of 1934. It is improbable that the economic effects of this condition can be confined to milk dealers and grammar school teachers, especially in view of the prediction of statisticians that before men and women now middle aged will be old the population of the country will decline, should the present trend continue. The Church does not condemn “birth control” because it is an economic evil. It denounces it because it is a moral wrong. It is an economic evil because it is a moral wrong, and not a moral wrong because it is an economic evil. For “the wages of sin is death”— economically as well as morally. Will the American people profit by the warning of the Church, based on Divine relevation as well as her experience through the ages and across the nations, in time to save themselves trora the fate of Greece and Rome? Long Live the King’s Attitude T HE King is dead, but the discussions prompted by the passing of His Majesty continue in feature sections and editorial columns of the newspapers. His refusal to take the anti-Catholic oath of office at the time of his coronation is being emphasized as an indica tion of his spirit and character. When King George V was at Mauritia on his world tour as Prince of Wales, local Catholic notables broached the subject of the anti-Catholic feature of the oath taken by the King of England, in which the King asserted: “The invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary and the Sacrifice of the mass as they are now used in the churches of Rome are superstitious and idolatrous.” The Prince said that he would never take such an oath. On the death of his royal father, who had, so the story runs, taken this part of the oath with embarrassment, King George V was as good as his word; despite the howls of bigots he refused to insult his Catholic sub jects and that part of the oath was eliminated. His son, King Edward VIII, now takes the revised oath as a matter of course, and protests, if any, have not been effective enough to get into the newspapers. Thus do we progress. The oath of the King of Eng land, however, has yet to become a model of tolerance. It requires him to swear: “I am a faithful member of the Protestant Reformed Church by law established in Eng land.” Only a Protestant may be ruler of an empire in which Protestants are a minority, and of a nation in which there are millions of Catholics, and numerous members of the Reformed Church by law established who deny they are Protestants. However, that is Eng land’s concern, and it will without doubt dispose of it in due time. In the meantime, we hope we shall not be misunder stood when we remind those who are exercised over “Roman Catholic intolerance” that only a Protestant may be King of England. And likewise (see the En- cylopedia Britannica) of Sweden and Norway. Murder in Mexico D ESPITE all that has come out of Mexico about re ligious persecution there, most Americans still have a hazy notion about it. Statistics presented by the Baltimore Archdiocesan Confederation for the Defense of Religious Liberty in Mexico serve to make general impressions definite. Forty priests have been murdered during the past ten years; the names, dates and places are given. Many others of whom there is no record have been killed. Five native Mexican Bishops have been expelled from the country for no other reason than the office they hold; twelve Mexican Bishops have been driven out of their Dioceses. In 1926 there were in Mexico about 3,000 priests, about one-eighth the number in the United States Now that number has been limited by law to 334, about fifty less than there are in the Diocese of Scranton, and half the number in the Dioceses of Pittsburgh or Buffalo. In fourteen states with a population of over six mil lion people, no Bishop or priests are permitted by local laws. In the Archdiocese of Guadalajara, where a few priests are allowed, in the first three months of last year thirty-four priests were imprisoned and ten exiled. Over 2,500 native Mexican priests, forbidden by law to exercise their sacred ministry, are in hiding. The officials of the Mexican government still blandly deny that there is persecution of religion there, and there are on this side of the Rio Grande people credul ous enough to believe them, apparently on the theory that although they may be guilty of murder, as indicated by political assassinations in their own ranks, they will not tell a lie. The Duty of Voting A RCHBISHOP McNICHOLAS of Cincinnati has issued, a pastoral on “the duty of voting” which could be read with salutary effect from every pulpit in the land. Every Catholic citizen should resolve to form the habit of voting, His Excellency says. “Whether or not elec tions seem important, the principle of voting habitually is important.” Dixie Musings The Tifton Gazette discovers a preacher who wants the world to take a year’s vacation from religion to demonstrate its need for it. The Ga zette suggests instead that everyone try religion for a year to see how it works. Down in Arkansas, according to the newspapers, Negro parents named their baby AAA, and now they want to know if the infant is unconstitu tional. The Pelham Journal comments ap provingly on Cardinal O’Connell’s emphasizing of the moral obligation of citizens to endeavor to select good men for public office. Johnny Spencer on the Macon Tele graph notes that the Italians are re versing the order of things by throw ing their rings into the hat. Negroes are growing less numerous proportionately in the United States, we are informed. In 1790 negroes con stituted 19.3 per cent of the popula tion of the nation. In 1930 this had dropped to 9.7 per cent. This instead of every fifth person being a negro, the situation in 1790, now every tenth person is colored. Negro illiteracy is decreasing in en couraging fashion. In 1870, 81.4 per cent of the Negroes were illiterate; this dropped to 16.3 per cent in 1930. There are in the nation 54,439 school teachers, 25,034 clergymen, 10,583 mu sicians and teachers of music, 5,728 trained nurses, 2,146 college profes sors 1,7E46 dentists and 1,230 lawyers, .judges and justices. The Dawson News presents these statistics, and remarks that “due no doubt to hard economic conditions the Negro has had to face,’ ’the tenth of the population which is colored furnished a fifth of the prisoners re ceived by the courts in three recent years. The problem of illiteracy and poverty among Negroes therefore does not concern them alone. Rev. Dr. John B. McCloskey, pastor of St. James’ Church, Red Bank, N. J., for many years a warm friend of The Bulletin, was honored by his arish and community recently when e completed ten years as pastor, succeeding his late brother, Father James P. McCloskey. We first met Dr. McCloskey in Chicago. Mr. Hav- erty met him in Europe this summer. We both met him again at Bishop O’Hara’s installation. May we meet often. Guyton, Ga., had an Irish program in the school chapel hour recently, the eighth and ninth grades spon soring it. The numbers included “The Story of St. Patrick’s,” “Story of the Shamrock.” “Persecution of the Catholics,” “The Irish Famine,” solos such as “A Little Bit of Heav en,” readings like “The Low-Backed Car,” and a chorus, “The Wearing of the Green.” Such a program in a public school would have rocked the state from end to end a few years back. A writer in the London Universe advises Catholics writing letters to editors to “be brief, be charitable, stick to the point.” The Catholic Lay men’s Association's policy. “Tobacco Road” is still having rough going. Eugene McCarthy of the Cleveland Universe-Bulletin writes that the Rev. Dr. W. W. T. Dun can, pastor of Lakewood Methodist Church there, criticized it along the lines of the comment in The Bulle tin in a recent issue. To the asser tion that a play cannot live on vulgar ity alone, the minister replies that burlesque does. One Sunday afternoon several weeks ago we started out to find To bacco Road and to look it over. We discovered that we had been going out there from time to time for the past few years for social meetings of a civic movement—and never knew what a diabolic neighborhood it was. There is some consolation in the fact that the others there shared our ig norance. The Catholic Press is rather silent on Governor Smith’s Liberty League address. But Father Coughlin, Father John A. Ryan, Simon Baldus and oth er Catholic publicists do not seem to agree with the governor’s linking of the New Deal with socialism and communism. We are not in accord with the atti tude of those Catholics who believe that men like Governor Smith ought to be silent lest those who resent their criticisms will try to make the Church suffer for them. In the first place, such persons are for the most part' afflicted with an anti-Catholic tinge, which will no doubt break out sooner or later, with or without prov ocation. In the second place, men like Governor Smith are not going to keep their opinions to themselves when they think it proper to enunciate them, and we might as well make the best of it. Dudley Glass, the always sprightly and often profound columnist of the Atlanta Georgian, admits he picked this from some other newspaper, thereby winning for himself A pluses in frankness and in discerning taste: “If the radio’s slim fingers can pluck a melody out of the night and toss it over a continent or sea; if the petaled white notes of a violin are blown across a mountain or a city’s din; if songs like crimson roses are pulled from thin blue air; why should mor tals wonder if God hears prayer?” Dr. Patrick Scanlon, managing ed itor of The Tablet, tells of carrying clippings around in his pocket for weeks, and discovering them when he was sending the suit to a tailor. So they do that up in Brooklyn, too. Marquis Daniel J. Murphy, whom His Eminence Cardinal Dougherty lauded in his' New Year’s address, gave $262,154.50 to St. Mary’s Institute for the Blind, and collected more than another $130,000 from his friends. He contributed $27,000 to the new Arch diocesan Seminary. The Greensboro Herald-Journal quotes an exchange which quotes St. Peter as saying that the homes in heaven are built from the material we send up while we are on earth. Mr. Murphy should have a mansion indeed, for no doubt his spiritual in vestments were as abundant as his material contributions. Says A. W. G., writing in the Bos ton Post one of those frigid days in January: “I love New England’s cli mate, with its crystal atmosphere; and I thank my lucky stars, Califor nia, that I’m here. We don’t boast of our sunshine, but when spark ling on the snow, and shining through the frosty panes, it beats a Kleig light show.” We’re so pleased that A. W. G. is so happy. A proposed free City College in Queen’s County. Brooklyn, is meeting spirited oppos’tion. The Jamaica Li ons’ Club, the past president of the Chamber of Commerce, the pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church and the Rabbi of the Temple Israel are among those working against the idea. Wil liam Hastings, past president of the Chamber of Commerce of Jamaica, says the college would foster commu nism; other city colleges, he says have turned out large numbers of communists. Borough President Har vey, of Brooklyn, asserts that such colleges are “breeding grounds, for ‘reds.’ ” The erudite Birmingham News- Age-Herald says that Senator Borah is a descendent of Martin Luther's wife, Catherine Von Borah, who, according to the National Weekly Poll of Pub lic Qpinion, quoted by the N.-A.-H., escaped from a convent during the Protestant Reformation by scaling the convent wall and climbing into empty beer barrels.” It is quite probable that those responsible for the empty beer barrels are the authors of the “convent escape” story. The Birming ham News-Age-Herald, not having helped to empty the barrels and mindful of the stories circulated in 1928, ought not to have been taken in like that. Every Catholic citizen must enjoy the greatest possible liberty in voting, he asserts. ' “It must be made un mistakably clear that the Church of Cincinnati espouses no political party. She desires only that good men and sane men, men whose honesty is unquestionable, what ever be their creed or their political affiliation, be chosen for public office. “The Catholic voter should not be influenced either for or against a candidate because of his religion. May our country be not scourged by recurring waves of bigotry, which have written disgraceful pages of our history. “It is extremely important that previous to an elec tion the issue to be presented be seriously studied, and that the character of the candidates be investigated. No word, however, must be spoken from the Catholic pul pit either in favor of a candidate or against him. “Issues must neither be favored nor opposed unless they have moral implications. Whenever there is ques tion or moral turpitude, the Catholic Church will fear lessly speak her mind.” The Church is not in politics. Catholics as citizens have not only a right to be in politics, but a duty to exercise their right of franchise, and to exercise it in the manner outlined by the Archbishop of Cincinnati, a manner which will appeal to all right-minded mien irrespective of creed. Coach W. A. Alexander, of Georgia Tech, says that one of the greatest expeditions which fell to his lot, the Olympic games of 1928, was memor able chiefly because of his association with “Al” Doonan on that trip. Mr. Doonan, whose death was announced in the previous issue of The Bulletin, was for many years sectional repre sentative on the Olympic committee. Athletic Director H. J. Stegeman and the entire coaching staff of the University of Georgia went to At lanta to attend Mr. Doonan’s funeral at Sacred Heart Church. Father Francis P. LeBuffe, S.J., a distinguished son of Charleston, man aging editor of Thought, New York, asked what he considered the great est need of Catholic journalism, said: “Wider vision of Catholic world events, fewer ‘attacks,’ more con structive editorials, articles, etc. — and fewer parochial items ^about card parties and oyster suppers.” The Macon Telegraph announces in an emphatic headline: “Hit-Run Dri vers Ordered Arrested.” President Roosevelt has given Fa ther James R. Cox of Pittsburgh, a stone from the White House to be used in the building of his new church. We wonder if someone will not construe this as union of Church and State. Up in Portland. Maine ,a former resident of the South undertook to observe Christmas with fireworks, as he did below the Mason - Dixon line. The neighbors couldn’t under stand it and the police locked him up. Father F. C. Roy, S.J., observed his golden jubilee as a Jesuit at the Church of the Immaculate Conception recently, and Father P. A. Ryan, S. J., pastor, marked it with a celebra tion of the kind he used to put on in Augusta whn he was pastor of Sacred Heart Church there. For the golden jubilee of Sacred- Heart Church, Fa ther Ryan had more Bishops, prelates and priests than ever attended a sim ilar ceremony in the Southeast. That was 12 years ago. Father Ryan has lost none of his energy or initiative. The Rev. Herbert S. Bigelow, a member of the Cincinnati City Coun cil and the local leader of Father Coughlin’s National Union for Social Justice, is a non-Catholic clergyman. Gil Dobie, Cornell’s gloomy football coach, has resigned and will coach Boston College. Holy Cross promises to give him something to be gloomy about. After reading Belloc’s Wolsey for the third time, we still think we pre fer Wheeler.