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SIX
SHE BUEEEHN OF TOE CATHOLIC EAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA
MAY 22, 1937
THE BULLETIN
The Official Organ of the Catholic Laymen’s
Association of Georgia
RICHARD REID. Editor
815-816 Lamar Building Auguste. Georgia
Subscription Price $2.00 Per Year
Published monthly by the Publicity Department
of
with the Approbation of the Most Rev. Bishops „
Raleigh Charleston. Savannah. St. Augustine and Nash-
ville and of the Rt Rev Abbot Ordinary of Belmont.
ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1936-1937
ALFRED M BATTEY. Augusta President
J. J. HAVERTY, K S. G.. Atlanta ...First Vice-President
J. B. McCALLUM. Atlanta .Secretary
THOMAS F. WALSH, Savannah Treasurer
RICHARD REID, Augusta Publicity Director
MISS CECILE. FERRY Augusta. Asst. Publicity Director
Vol. XVIH
May 22, 1937
No. 5
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.
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.
Appropriate Protest
S OME of our- newspaper editors are alarmed over the
action of Bishops in certain states voicing before
legislative committees their opposition to the so-called
“Child Labor Amendment”, and they rejoice with Wil
liam Allen White’s Emporia Gazette because “half a
dozen priests all over the country” differed with the
Bishops on the matter. There are 30,000 priests in the
United States.
“This is recorded here to prove that nobody bosses all
the Catholic people, least of all the Bishops,” says the
sage of Emporia. “No more than the Methodist Bishops
or superintendents^boss the Methodists. . . . There is
no such thing as a united Catholic vote, a solid Metho
dist Church or an undivided phalanx of Baptist votes.’
This is a rare discovery; Catholics, not to mention oth
ers, have always been aware of their freedom to vote
as they please in political matters.
The Gazette’s observations, reprinted in the Southeast
as well as elsewhere, are true—up to a certain point.
f
There is no such thing as a solid Catholic, Methodist or
Baptist vote unless the issue at stake is a clear threat to
their rights and duties. If a measure before the electo
rate threatens the fundamental rights of the Catholic,
Methodist or Baptist Church, and the members thereof
do not rally solidly to the defense of their church at the
ballot box, no Christian or religious-minded man or
woman should find in such indifference occasion for re
joicing.
It is Catholic teaching that the child is not the ward
of the state. This is a principle to which all real Chris
tian denominations subscribe. The Bishops who express
ed their opposition to the “Child Labor Amendment”
were convinced that the measure, which would give
Congress the power to limit, regulate and prohibit the
labor of children up to the age of eighteen, was a fatal
step toward the un-Christian, anti-religious theory of
state-denomination of the family and the youth of the
nation, and this conviction was strengthened by the ob
stinate refusal of the proposers of the amendment to
edit out of it the possibility of Congress ever exercis
ing the power which they assure the country they do
not intend Congress to wield.
Believing that the “Child Labor Amendment” endang
ered the rights over children which Christian teaching
and the natural law give to parents, the Bishops, to be
true to their consciences, were forced to express their
concern and disapproval. The “half-dozen priests” out
of the thirty thousand who expressed disapproval of
the Bishops’ protest are in accord on the fundamental
principle, but believe that although the amendment
gives Congress the power to violate the natural rights of
parents, Congress will not exercise it. We find it im
possible to believe that any group would work so hard.
So long and so frantically to secure such power for our
.national law-makers without intending to work just as
hard, just as long and just as frantically to have them
exercise it.
The Catholic Church is not in politics. The Bishops are
not in politics. The clergy are not in politics, the single
example of Father Coughlin from among the thirty
thousand priests of the nation being the exception which
proves the rule . (And he was not a candidate for office
himself; his nominee was not a Catholic.) But when
the rights of the Church are threatened, as they were
when th Orgeon Legislature tried to outlaw Catholic
schools, and when Christian principles are violated, as
the Bishops of New York and other states were con
vinced they were in the so-called “Child labor Amend
ment”, Catholics, whether Bishops,- priests or laymen,
will raise their voices in protest, and no charge of “poli
tics” will cow- them into silence.
The name given to the bill in question, "Child Labor
Amendment”, was cleverly chosen. "Youth Control
Amendment” would have been better; at least it w'ould
be accurate, but it would have alienated sympathy. It
is the title that has created no little misunderstanding
of the Church's opposition to the amendment, as though
the Church favored the economic exploitaion of chil
dren. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The
Church has always defended human rights, and she
stands out again as their champion. Misunderstanding
may arise; this the Church deplores, but does not fear.
Incidentally, the finest Child labor laws'in the coun
try are in states where Catholics are most numerous.
An Apostle From Georgia
T HIRTEEN years ago, John J. O’Connor, an Augusta
young man as universally popular as he was char
acteristically modest, volunteered for a life of service to
God and entered the Society of Jesus.
After his novitiate and classical studies at St. Charles
College in Louisiana and his studies in philosophy at St.
Michael’s near Spokane, Wash., he spent his regency as
a member of the faculty of Jesuit High School in New
Orleans, where his unusual ability as a leader of young
men became increasingly evident.
But this gentle, friendly, retiring, zealous young man
was still unsatisfied with the extent of his sacrifice, and
when the Ceylon missions in the distant Indian Ocean,
half way around the world, were entrusted to the Jesuit
Fathers of the Southern Province, he immediately beg
ged to be sent there, supplementing his petition with
fervent prayers.
His plea was answered, and three years ago he bid
farewell to his parents, brothers and sisters, whom he
knew he would never see again in this world, to leave
for his new field to labor among the Moslems. He plung
ed into his new work with the zeal of an apostle, and
his happiness in his sacrifice for the cause of Christ ra
diated from the letters which The Bulletin was privileg
ed to receive from him from time to time.
A Jesuit scholastic when he left for the Orient, Mr.
O’Connor after a year in the mission field was sent to
India to the Jesuit Seminary there for his theological
studies, the final step toward the desire of his heart, the
priesthood. Here he was stricken, and, in the inscrutable
designs of Providence, called to his reward in the flush
of his youthful zeal.
There are those who do not understand why the
Church permits a young man from a missionary terri
tory like the South, where priests are hardly numerous
enough to minister to the faithful, to go to a pagan
country like Ceylon. They would not be able to under
stand why Ireland in her poverty and France in her
days of bitter atheistic persecution or Germany when
the heel of Bismarck was on the Church there should
share their priests with the struggling Church in the
United States. They are notable to understand the
words of Christ when He said: “Going, therefore, teach
ye all nations, whatsoever I have commanded you,” even
though the w r ork of the evangelization of the place in
which He uttered these words had barely been started.
But the gentle John O’Connor understood, and made
the sacrifice which brought death to him in a strange
land, far from his family which he loved with a de
votion which only those who knew the tenderness of
his heart can appreciate. The world considers death
at such a tender age tragic,and we, because we are hu
man, grieve with his family. But John O’Connor, see
ing face to face and not, as St. Paul said, “through a
glass in a dark manner,” would console us with the
joyous thought of the radiant happiness of one whose
life has been given to God being called to his eternal
home in the morning of his anticipated decades of cease
less toil and desolate self-sacrifice.
Dixie Musings
The editor of The Bulletin is on
the road this month endeavoring to
make a small payment on the debt
he, The Bulletin and the Catholic
Laymen’s Association of Georgia owe
to the University of Notre Dame, to
the Catholic Press Association, to
friends in Boston, to Spring Hill Col
lege and to the University of Dayton
for their great kindnesses.
This is the third time in seventeen
years we have been away for issues
of The Bulletin, in 1922, when called
back to Holy Cross College without
notice for a commencement there,
when in Europe four years ago, and
this month.
In the first batch of mail we re
ceived in Europe was a letter from
a friend telling us how much the
current issue of The Bulletin made
him miss us; the.issue was terrible,
he said. We did not know whether
to be amused or discouraged; we had
gotten the issue out before we left.
The next issue was, we know, much
better; it was supervised by the schol
arly Hugh Kinchley, who is playing
a return engagement in this issue.
Mr. Kinchley is an alumnus of Mount
St. Mary’s, the Alma Mater of Bishop
Hafey, of Bishop Toolen and of al
most as many other Bishops as Holy
Cross.
The Society for the Propagation of
the Faith in a recent news release
was good enough to quote an article
of ours on the Church in the South,
and paid us the additional tribute of
referring to us as Richard Dix.
President H. J. Grant of the Latter
Day Saints, better known as the Mor
mons, told the 107th annual confer
ence of the denomination at Salt
Lake City, according to Milton Fleet
wood’s Cartersville, Ga., Tribune-
News: “I warned the people not to
vote for repeal of the Eighteenth
Amendment. The money spent for
liquor, tea, coffee, and tobacco would
save the world financially.”
The Labor Review, which is edited
by Max Wilk.
In the pioneer days of the Knights
of Columbus in Georgia no member
of the order was better known than
James Kehoe, of Washington, D. C.,
who initiated hundreds and even
thousands of members of the order in
the Southeast. Mr. Kehoe has retired
from active work in the exemplifi
cation of degrees, and has been suc
ceeded by his son, James Kehoe, Jr.,
and his brothers, but Mr. Kehoe, Sr.,
is still active otherwise. His num
erous friends in the Southeast will be
interested t* know that on March 21
he observed his seventy-fifth birth
day, and that on April 9, Mr. and
Mrs. Kehoe observed the fifty-fifth
anniversary of their marriage. May
they be preserved for their seventy-
fifth wedding anniversary and be
yond.
Catholics interested in Little The
atre League work ought to welcome
the announcement that the Catholic
University of America will sponsor
the Blackfriar Institute of Dramatic
Arts at the University Summer
School from June 28 to August 7.
Nothing human is alient to the
church, and the use of the theatre
and dramatics in building up a gen
uine Catholic culture is directly in
line with the Holy Father’s and our
Bishops’ efforts for Catholic Action.
The Blackfriar Institute is a part of
the university’s regular summer
course, and it will end with a confer
ence August 7 and 8. The Rev. Dr.
Urban Nagle, O. P„ is director of the
Institute. Those who cannot take the
courses offered by the Institute dur
ing the summer session are invited
to the closing conference.
The Bishop of Detroit
T O the non-Catholic world, the late Bishop Michael
Gallagher, of Detroit, was known only as Father
Coughlin's Bishop who, according to columnists, called
the radio priest “the Voice of God.” The fact that Bishop
Gallagher did no such thing did not alter the impression
in the mind of the public; what Bishop Gallagher did
say was that “when Father Coughlin presents Christ’s
moral solution to social problems, as expounded by the
Popes, his voice is the voice of God.”
To Catholics, however, Bishop Gallagher was known
as a priestly priest, a fatherly shepherd of his flock,
whose heart went out to the suffering, the poor and the
humble, in whose career the Father Coughlin episode
was but an incident.
Bishop Gallagher was appointed to the See of Detroit
in 1918 after three years as coadjutor Bishop and as
Bishop of Grand Rapids.
There were 318 priests in the Diocese when he be
came Bishop; there were 800 when he died. The number
of resident pastors increased from 174 to 291, the num
ber of churches from 246 to 345, the number of parishes
with schools from 102 to 201, the number of children in
Catholic schools from 44,436 to 102,395, the Catholic pop
ulation from 386,000 to 607,434. Five new hospitals were
established under his direction, and a four million dollar
fund he sought for the seminary for the education and
training of priests of the Diocese swelled to nine million
dollars when the subscriptions were totaled.
These achievements indicate the zealous, apostolic
heart of Bishop Gallagher. He was gentle, kindly and
even shy until aroused by injustices, but his charity
always overshadowed any indignation which ever arose
in his heart. The publicity imposed on Bishop Gallagher
hid his true character from the general public, but not
from the Catholics of the United States, who mourn him
as a fearless champion of principles, an unfailing defen
der of freedom of opinion and a great-hearted lover of
mankind.
We hadn’t thought of tea and coffee
as allies of John Barleycorn recent
ly. And we thought the Duke (of
North Carolina, not Windsor) alliance
with tobacco had given it some re
spectability. But if we had only been
observant, we might have noticed
what a tottering wreck tea has made
of the English people.
Workers in Tokyo and throughout
Japan are agitating for reduction of
their working hours to eighty-four
a week, which is an answer to those
who profess to believe that there is
no great difference between Chris
tian and pagan civilization. And
they got even the eighty-four hour
week idea from nations where the
Christian principle of the innate dig
nity of man has elevated his status
to ever-rising levels.
An Atlanta Journal headline tells
us: “Rails Going Places Says J. J.
Pelley.” Georgia knew Mr. Pelley,
president of the Association of Amer
ican Railroads, as president of the
Central of Georgia Railroad and of
tire Ocean Steamship Company. And
he saw to it in those days that rails
went places, and not around in cir
cles.
Hush Burton, editor of the Lavonia,
Ga., Times, proposes a solution of the
liquor problem. The Batesburg, S. C.,
News and other publications are im
pressed by it Mr. Burton, who is a
deacon in the Baptist Church, sug
gests that first of all the Baptists
should quit drinking, “not that Bap
tists drink any worse than Method
ists or Presbyterians, but there are
so many Baptists.
“If Baptists quit drinking that
would solve half the problem of
drinking among church members in
Georgia. Second, Methodists, and
Presbyterians and members of other
wouldn’t entirely solve the problem,
but it would come so near it that it
wouldn’t be any worry.”
We should like to know what pro
portion of the members of the de
nominations committed to prohibition
has never violated the state prohi
bition law, and what proportion vio
lates it routinely.
And before passing judgment on
them for not squaring their conduct
with their principles, we might do
little examinging of conscience on
the number of our own who are
guilty of sunilar inconsistency in the
matter, for instance, of the Legion
of Decency program.
The Catholic Herald Citizen of Mil
waukee, in its “Ten Years Old” col
umn, recalls that: “Patrick E. Crow
ley, president of the New York Cen
tral Lines and the Boston and Albany
Railroad, served the Mass of Father
John B. Kelly, of New York each
morning during the priest’s sojourn
in Augusta, Ga.”
“Communism,” says Monsignor Fulton Sheen,
cism, only more so.”
‘is Fas-
“Every Catholic,” said the late Gilbert K. Chesterton,
“enjoys more freedom in Catholicism than any liberal
does under Bolshevism or Fascism.” It is not the
Church but the State which is restricting political ac
tion where it is restricted.
a small fraction of those who read the three ssorles
exposed here will ever see the refutation.
We recall asking Mr.- Crowley's
permission to publish such an item
in The Bulletin for the edification of
our readers; few men serve Mass.
Mr. Crowley of course agreed. The
N. C. W. C. News Service picked it
up from The Bulletin, and practical
ly every Catholic newspaper in the
United States and a number else
where printed it, most of them fea
turing it on the front page. And now,
ten years later, the story bobs up in
Milwaukee. Perhaps Mr. Crowley
some day will bob up in Augusta
again.
The Catholic Herald Citizen recalls
that fifty years ago, Windthorst was
the leader of the Catholics in Ger
many. He was small physically but
big mentally. A man of large pro
portions, being worsted by Wind
thorst in debate, bellowed: “You had
better stop wagging your tongue or
I will put you in my pocket.” Wind
thorst retorted: “You’d better put
me in your pocket, where you have
more room.”
Alexander Stephens, the illustrious
Georgia adversary of Know-Nothing-
ism, vice president of the Confeder
acy and granduncle of the late Father
John M. Salter, S. J., provincial of
the Jesuit Fathers in the South, is
credited with a similar retort. Steph
ens was frail and under average size.
An opponent in debate roared at him:
Why, I could gulp you down in a
mouthful!” Stephens snapped back:
“Then you would have more brains
in your stomach than in your head.”
Some of the stories intended for
the April issue of The Bulletin turn
ed up in The Labor Review of Au
gusta instead, also printed by The
Herald. While our readers ’ missed
them, they were more of a novelty in better for having known him.
Wise-cracking columnists did not
let the opposition of New York clergy
to burlesque pass without utilizing
it to fill some of their space. But
they can’t wise-crack, at least in pub
lic, and the hideous murders of wom
en and little children by morons’ in
cited to their lustful crimes, as the
evidence often shows, by such in
iquities and by the salacious liter
ature which loads down thousands
of news stands. Countless youths
who are not morons are having their
entire lives warped by these evils,
attacks on their opponents as puri
tanical to the contrary notwithstand
ing.
Editor Dave Turner of the Bullock
County Times remarks that “the Sun
day Schools of Statesboro convene
each Sunday morning at 10:45. Vis
itors are always w'elcome—and some
times attend.”
The Greensboro, Ga., Herald-Jour
nal, Carey Williams, editor, remarks:
“Some of the Georgia newspapers
which fought A1 Smith in 1928 be
cause he was wet are mighty quiet
concerning the liquor election of
June 8.” And a number of the news
papers which supported Governor
Smith in 1928 are opposing the repeal
of the state prohibition law.
“Why do Catholics omit the words:
‘For Thine is the Kingdom, the Pow
er and the Glory, forever, Amen’?”
an inquirer asks Father Bertrant
Conway, C. S. P., in The Missionary,
and Father Conway answers: Be
cause they do not belong in the pray
er that our Lord taught the Apostles,
but were inserted there by some
copyist who took them from the Old
Testament. They were rejected as
unauthentic by St. Jerome in the
fourth century, and in the nineteenth
by the authors of the Protestant Re
vised Version of 1881; the King James
Version omits this insertion in Luke
XI, 4.
We learn with deep regret of the
death of Editor Albert Sweat, whom
we first knew as editor of The Cal
houn Times some years ago, and re
cently editor of The Darien Gazette.
Mr. Sweat’s editorial column was
always wholehearted, wholesome and
fair; he had a sense of humor that
was keen without ever being sharp.
The press of Georgia and his asso
ciates will miss him, and they are