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TOE BULLETIN OP TOE CATHOLIC V AYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OP GEORGIA
JULY 31, 1937
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 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. XVIII July 31. 1937 No. 7
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.
The Church and the Negro
T HE universality of the Church is demonstrated
again by the letter from the Sacred Consistorial
Congregation in Rome to the Cardinals, Archbishops
and Bishops of the United States warmly commending
the work of the Commission for the Catholic Missions
among the Colored People and the Indians, and urging
them to greater achievement in this field.
There are twelve million Negroes in the United
States; of these about 250,000 are Catholics. Therefore
Catholics are about ten times as numerous among white
people in the United States as they are among colored,
which is encouraging only when one reviews statistics
of a generation or two ago, but which indicates the
challenge before the Church especially at this time
when “more than ever negroes are exposed to the
dangers of unbelief and to pernicious doctrines of every
sort.”
The Sacred Consistorial Congregation points out that
ordinarily the Negroes are not in a position to provide
churches and schools for themselves; it is a work there
fore which commends itself to the charity of Catholics,
and the number of churches and schools which have
been reared throughout the country for colored con
gregations shows how they have responded.
With Red agents seeking to implant in the minds of
the colored people as well as others particularly in our
larger cities the pernicious doctrines on which Com
munism is based, Catholic loyalty to Church and Coun
try demands renewed and extended efforts in this di
rection. It is not merely a Southern problem; there
are more Negroes in the City of New York or Chicago
or Philadelphia than in the State of Kentucky or West
Virginia, more in Detroit or Cleveland than in any city
in the South except New Orleans, more in Indianapolis
Or Cincinnati than in Dallas or Nashville, and more
within five miles of the State House in Boston than in
Miami, Fort Worth or San Antonio; and more in Penn
sylvania than in Florida. But the problem in this sec
tion is the one of immediate concern to Southern
Catholics.
Freedom of the Press
T HERE are many who believe that the Catholic press
has been rather supercritical in its assertion that
the secular press of the United States as a whole has
conveyed an erroneous impression of the situation in
Spain by its erroneous and false reports. They may be
interested in a newspaperman’s conception of the situ
ation in another field.
The newspaperman is the famed columnist, Mark Sul
livan, writing in The New York-Tribune and other
newspapers throughout the land. He quotes Mrs. Roose
velt as complaining in a column of items about her and
her family appearing daily “which has no foundation
in fact”
He cites a published story in a metropolitan daily
stating that Former President Hoover was planning to
follow Lindbergh’s example and move to Europe “to
live an expatriate from the land that twice repudiated
his political philosophy.” Mr. Hoover immediately
wired: “There is not a single word of truth in your
Statement of this morning.”
Such examples might be multiplied indefinitely, and
Westbrook Pegler says that “an honest examination of
conscience in our business might do some permanent
good.” The Danbury, Conn., News-Times asserts that
“the press needs to look to its methods, its manners and
its morals.”
The newspapers of the South are not as a class of
fenders in this respect in the same degree as news
papers in metropolitan areas, but the news services and
columnists whose matter radiates from our great centers
bring the plague to them. Freedom of the press means
free discussion of public affairs and accurate reports of
the public acts of officials. It gives no one the right to
print inaccurate or false reports, and if the present
tendency of sensational newspapers is continued, the re
action may be translated into law.
The Catholic Way
V ICTOR F. RIDDED, noted-New York publisher and
president of the New York State Board of Social
Welfare, in a commencement address at Fordham Uni
versity, sounded a note which seems to us to be badly
needed at this particular time when political and
economic intolerance surcharge the nation’s atmosphere.
Violent men have often bent the forces of history to
their own wills, Mr. Ridder said, but never lastingly or
to the good of all.
“To conciliate—to win over an opposition, that is the
Catholic way, not to smash those who disagree with
you,” he asserted. “A real leader leaves behind him
converts, not evidences of ruthlessness.”
Mr. Ridder made other effective points in his address,
but this is the one we would emphasize particularly,
because it is one ..that seems to be lost sight of by the
world at large, and also by many Catholics.
In Soviet Russia the government is smashing those
who disagree with it, and the more it smashes, the more
smashing it finds it must do. Soviet Russia does not
admit that man has free will, given him by God, free
will which no power can take from him.
In the United States there are millions of people with
erroneous ideas about the Catholic Church. Millions of
people confuse the cause of the Church in Spain with
the cause of Fascism and reaction. We may be irritated
at the misconception, we may be angered by it, but
our irritation and our anger have no more effect that
King Canute’s commands to the waves. These millions
are going to continue to believe as they do until they
are taught better.
“To conciliate—to win over an opposition, that is the
Catholic way.” Our irritation is not going to win them
over, nor our anger, nor pouring out vials of scorn on
them. Only presenting the truth to them will be effec
tive, and that must be done patiently, continuously,
charitably.
In 1928, when the anti-Catholics of the country made
the nomination of a Catholic for the presidency the
occasion of another attack on the Church, the Catholic
Laymen’s Association of Georgia received feverish pleas
for counsel and advice on how to handle the situation
in various parts of the country. The best advice we
could give was: “Organize now and work against the
day of the next anti-Catholic campaign. It is too late to
organize a fire department when the city is burning
down.
It seems too late to do more than mitigate the worst
of the effects of the current misunderstanding of the
position of the Church in the Spanish trouble now.
What can be done should of course be done, but our
Catholic organizations and our Catholic leaders through
out the United States, if they wish to avoid a petition
of the present situation, must now launch a concerted,
definite, persistent, patient, charitable movement to
build up public opinion in the United States with the
tonic of truth so that it will be able to resist the con
tagion of anti-Catholic falsehood the next time it threat
ens an epidemic.
Significant Outcropping
I N RECENT weeks we came across two little Items
tucked away in reports of a Catholic college and a
Catholic university president which we would have
given only passing notice if it were not for the back
ground afforded them by the much-discussed articles
in The Forum and The Reader’s Digest.
The author of the article has had the honesty and the
courage to repudiate it, but thousands of readers still
remember, for instance, the reference to the purported
wealth of His Eminence, Cardinal O’Connell. Unfor-
*
tunately, no amount of repudiation will remove the re
sulting impression from the minds of those who prefer
to have it remain.
Most of the “wealth” of the Cardinal belongs to him
in the manner that the millions with which Harvard
University is endowed belong to President Conant, or
as the campus at the University of Georgia belongs to
President Caldwell.
One wealthy and generous man—possibly more—re
membered the Cardinal in his will, just as wealthy and
generous people are remembering laymen daily. These
fortunate laymen in most cases spend their generous
bequests on their own pleasure, and who criticizes or
begrudges them their money or enjoyment?
But to get back to the Cardinal—buried in the report
of the president of Boston College was a notation of a
gift of 550,000 from His Eminence. And the rector of
the Catholic University of America records a similar gift
to that institution for the benefit of students from the
Archdiocese of Boston.
It was only accidentally that we happened across these
items. How many such items we miss and how many
such gifts from our Bishops and priests are never pub
lished we have no means of knowing. But from time to
time we stumble across out-croppings which are highly
significant.
Most Bishops and priests are not so situated that they
can assist worthy causes so handsomely, but all Bishops
and priests as a class give a much larger share of their
usually modest income to charity and education than
any other class.
Incidentally, a priest in a Southern state recently
wrote The Bulletin apologizing for his inability to pay
for his subscription in recent years, an inability he ex
plained was due to the fact that he had drawn no salary
since the early days of the depression until a short while
ago. He inclosed a check for ten dollars to make amends
for his omission, . ■—..,1 , —>— -
Dixie Musings
One of our anti-New Deal news
paper says: “Secretary Wallace Hits
Inferior Mellons,” when it would like
to say: “Inferior Mellons Hit Secre
tary Wallace.”
In Germany or Russia we could
be shot for a crack like that. And
perhaps would.
While we’re on the subject of head
lines we might as well record this
from The Atlanta Journal: “Gov.
Rivers’ Illness Worse Than Thought.”
Two Georgians with typically Irish
names have been involved In shoot
ing scrapes in recent weeks. Both
were buried from Protestant
churches. One was the son of a min
ister named Murphy.
The wife of the Second Secretary
of the Japanese Embassy in London,
has been received into the Church.
The wife of the Japanese Ambassa
dor to Great Brtiain is a Catholic.
Cardinal Dougherty was received in
private audience by the Emperor of
Japan on his way home from the
Eucharistic Congress, as His Excel
lency, Bishop O’Hara, recalled in his
most interesting article in the June
issue of The Bulletin.
In the Eucharist Congress motion
picture shown by Father S. M. Bur-
gio, of the Vincentian Fathers in Sa
vannah, Augusta and Greensboro, N.
C., the number of Japanese and Chi
nese Bishops and priests officiating
at the various ceremonies was most
impressive. The Universal Church.
But no feature of the picture was
more interesting than the participa
tion of Bishop O’Hara, who delivered
the sermon at the closing Mass, and
whose every appearance on the
screen was greeted by thunderous
applause.
Georgia went dry by something
like 8,000 votes at the recent elec
tion. One hundred and thirteen
counties voted dry by a ratio of near
ly two to one, 75,966 against repeal
and 37,641 for repeal. The other for
ty-six counties voted wet. Richmond,
of which Augusta is the county seat,
voted wet five to one, and Chatham,
Savannah, ten to one. There are the
figures; do your own philosophizing
and moralizing.
There are two rather large groups
of Catholics in this country, the ul
tra-liberals and the ultra-conserva
tives. each of which suspects the or
thodoxy of the other. We believe—•
or perhaps hope—that they about
cancel each other, and therefore serve
that good purpose.
This leaves the progressive, mod
erate leadership of the Church free
to lead us to higher planes in the
Catholic way, peaceably, gradually,
advancing steadily with each genera
tion, and without violating the free
will which God has given to man and
which no power has the right or the
ability to take from him.
Mr. George Hoffman, K. S. G., of
Brooklyn, one of the most distin
guished Catholic laymen in the met
ropolitan area, who died in June, was
a warm friend of The Bulletin, being
interested in it and the Laymen’s As
sociation by our friend, Mr. Edward
V. Killeen, LL.D., K. S. G., also of
New York. Mr. Hoffman was a
leader in the sugar industry in the
United States. Bishop Molloy and
Bishop Kearney of Brooklyn assisted
at his funeral Mass.
Bishop Candler of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, told the graduating
class of the Georgia State College for
Women: “It may be that the pressure
of need may justify a woman in bus
iness, but there is one place where
she has no place. I refer to the po
litical arena. It is no place for her,
and she can serve society better in
the home.”
Die suffragettes wanted votes for
women in order to purify politics.
Since they started their participation
in political life, politics has become
as pure as the driven snow, the boast
that Theodore Roosevelt once made
(before 1912) about the Republican
Party.
And it prompted Bourke Cockran
to remark that it must have been
driven a devil of a way.
Now that the women have the vote,
they ought to exercise their right
of franchise if only to overcome the
advantage that their _ indifference
gives to professional politicians.
One can no more refuse to assist
his country in its hour of need than
he could take an oath to refuse to
help his mother if she were in dis
tress, the president of Georgetown
University told the university’s R. O.
T. C. Deploring the spirit of rebel
lion against military service, the
president, Father Arthur A. O’Leary,
said:
“We are deeply grateful that this
spirit of rebellion against military
service so prominent in some of the
universities of the land has failed to
find a foothold within our walls.”
It was our privilege to attend sev
eral commencements in Catholic uni
versities, colleges and schools, and
there was no pacifism evident in any
of them; voluntary military training
is the rule in most of our institutions
of higher learning. Catholics are ad
vocates of peace, not pacifism.
When Mr. E. D. Whisonant, for 14
years superintendent of schools of
Blackshear and Pierce County, Geor
gia, retired from that office, he issued
a statement in which among other
things he said: “I have respected the
tenets of my Catholic, Jewish and
Primitive Baptist friends. At no time
has anything been said by me or any
body else from the platform at the
high school or grammar school that
could in any wise give offense.”
Cumberland University, in Tennes
see, conferred the degree of "Doctor
of Canine Jurisprudence” on “Ras
cal”, the university law school’s bull
dog mascot, at formal exercises re
ported by Die Associated Press. We
presume the alumni are proud of
their new fellow alumnus, and that
the holder of honorary degrees from
the university rejoice with him.
The Columbus News-Record quotes
the Wesleyan Christian Advocate as
quoting the Minnesota Missionary as
saying that to call a clergyman “Rev.
Jones” instead of the “Rev. Mr.
Jones” is to be guilty of illiteracy.
Harper’s Magazine says it is “the
literary equivalent of eating peas
with a knife.”
President Roosevelt’s St. Patrick’s
Day address from Warm Springs to
the Hibernian Society at Savannah
and to the Irish Charitable Associa
tion at Boston was reprinted recently
in the Father Mathew Record,, edited
by our friend, Father Senan, in Dub
lin.
The Charleston News and Courier
reports a suggestion that Ladies’ Isl
and, near Beaufort, should not be so
designated, but rather the Island of
Our Lady. The fact that the next
island is St. Helena’s Island "leads
to the suspicion that the name of
Ladies’ Island has been changed by
careless speaking,” The News and
Courier says editorially.
Not long ago we received an offi
cial-looking envelope marked: "Fed
eral Bureau of Investigation, U. S.
Department of Justice, Washington,
D. C.” Were we relieved on feverish
ly tearing it open to discover that it
contained the address of Mr. J. Ed
gar Hoover at the convention of the
Holy Name Societies in New York
City.
Recently we saw an item in The
Catholic Citizen of Milwaukee, which
impressed us very much. We put it
aside for use in The Bulletin, and
when we got around to preparing it
for The Bulletin we noted that The
Catholic Citizen had reprinted it,
with credit, from this column.
In England, Angelican members of
Parliament are voting rather solidly
to broaden the divorce laws which
are already so lax that the King has
to give up his throne at the instiga
tion of the Established Church to be
a party to a marriage which the civil
law allows.
All of which is very confusing, and
ought to afford food for meditation
to those Catholics who are troubled
to the depths of their souls and who
are deeply concerned about the fut-
ture of the Church because their pas
tor preaches too long or not long
enough, or because his taste in art,
literature, clothes, household fur
nishings or whatnot is too highbrow
or too plebian.
Don Luigi Sturzo in The Common
weal explains the difference between
Communism and Fascism. If you
have four cows, Communism takes
them from you. Fascism allows you
to keep your cows, but it does all the
milking.
The Harlem (Ga.) News says: "It
is gratifying to liberal Christians of
all denominations to see how honored
and beloved is the Pope of Rome.
Pope Pius XI is 80 years old, and all
papers took note ol his age, of his
usefulness, and wished him contin
uance of days among us.”
Commenting upon the report that
the Duke of Windsor will buy a cas
tle, Editor Joseph J. Quinn of the
Southwest Courier, reports on what
he considers unimpeachable authority
that England has already given him
the gate.
The Bishops of England directed an
address to the King on the occasion
of his coronation expressing their
heartfelt good wishes and loyalty, as
well as that of the Catholics of the
nation. Sir John Sirmon, the home
secretary, however, refused to submti
the letter to the king because the
Archbishops and Bishops signing it
referred to themselves as Catholic
Archbishops and Bishops.
We are under the impression that
this feeling was softening in Eng
land, as it has been in the United
States, and we still think—although
the wish may be father to the thought
—that Sir John Sirmon is a reaction
ary and-an anomaly and all that sort
of thing.
Benedict Elder in The Record com
ments on a Louisville Courier-Jour
nal headline: ‘Cops Break Up Irish
Anti-King Demonstration”, thereby
affording an opportunity for those so
inclined to say: The Irish are fight
ing again”. Mr. Elder read the story
coming from Dublin, and concludes
that the proper headline would have
been: Irish Cops Break Up Anti-
King Demonstration.”