The bulletin of the Catholic Laymen's Association of Georgia. (Augusta, Ga.) 1920-1957, January 29, 1938, Image 6

The bulletin of the Catholic Laymen's Association of Georgia., January 29, 1938, Image 6

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Newspaper Page TextSIX THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC L AYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA JANUARY 29, 1938 THE BULLETIN Hie Official Organ ot the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Georgia RICHARD REID. Editor 815-816 Lamar Building Augusta, Georgia Subscription Price $2.00 Pei Year Published monthly by the Publicity Department with the Approbation ol the Most Rev Bishops ol Raleigh Charleston Savannah. St Augustine and Nash- ville and ol Rt Rev Abbot Ordinary of Belmont. ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1937-1938 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 Executive Secretary MISS CECIL.E FERRY. Augusta, Asst. Exec. Secretary yvt. VIX JANUARY 29. 1938 No. 1 Entered as second class matter June 15. 1921. at the Post Office at Augusta Ga. under act of March 1879 Ac cented for mailing at special rate of postage provided for m Section 1103. Act of October 3. 1917. authorized Sentember L 1921 Member oi N C W C News Service the Catholic Press Association of the United States the Georgia Press Assomafion and the National Editorial' Association An Illustrious Layman I N ONE of his articles in the memorable series on the Manila Eucharistic Congress, written by His Ex cellency, Bishop O’Hara, His Excellency told of renew ing his acquaintance with the great Chinese layman, Mr. Lo Pa Hong, whom he had the pleasure of enter taining some years before in Philadelphia. “I consider it one of the great privileges of my life to have known this outstanding Catholic layman, who lives on the other side of the world in a pagan country,” Bishop O’Hara wrote, after outlining his distinguished charities and his exemplary and even saintly private life. News from Shanghai announces that Lo Pa Hong is dead, his life cut down by an assassin’s bullet, Lo Pa Hong w r ho contributed $200,000 annually to sixteen chari table institutions he created in Shanghai alone, one of them a hospital named for his patron, St. Joseph, hous ing 2,000 inmates and caring for 500 dispensary cases daily. Lo Pa Hong, whose “signal piety” and "generous bounty to the poor” recommended him to three Popes, not only gave magnificently from his private means, but he influenced others to do likewise, and devoted a large part of his busy life as a business executive in ministering to the sick, personally aiding the poor, visit ing in the prisons. His interests centered in Shanghai, where he was general manager of the Chinese Electric Power Com pany, the Chapei Electric and Water Works, the Ta- Yung Navigation Company and a number of other cor porations. The sacking of Shanghai by the Japanese reduced his enterprise to ruins and sent him during the past few months from great wealth to poverty. But Lo Pa Hong was not disheartened; he continued his personal service to the poor, the sick, the wounded, the dying, baptizing many as they breathed their last, until the day when a misguided zealot’s bullet sent him be fore the Eternal Judgment Seat. We may be certain that the bankrupt Lo Pa Hong, who called himself “the coolie of St. Joseph”, appeared before his Divine Master adorned with works infinitely more precious than all the wealth of the Indies. Differences in Church Law C ATHOLICS who see no incongruity between variety in the laws of states on the same subject but who are disturbed by differences in regulations in the sev eral Dioceses would be scandalized by some Catholic calendars which have come to us during the holidays. In one for Ireland and Scotland, for instance, Wed nesdays in Lent are marked as days of abstinence in Ireland, but there is a notation: “No abstinence in Scot land.” St. Patrick’s Day is “a holy day of obligation in Ireland” but not in Scotland; St. Joseph’s Day, March 19, is “a holy day of obligation in Scotland” but not in Ireland. Whitsunday Eve is a day of fast in Scotland, and of fast and abstinence in Ireland. The calendar of The Universe in London includes the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, Corpus .Christi, June 16, and the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, June 29, as holy days of obligation on which Catholics in England are obliged to hear Mass, and the Catholics of Ireland and Scotland as well, but not those of the United States. And the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day of obligation in the United States, Ireland and Scotland, is not one in England. The Church is tile same in all nations and at all times in Uie matter of doctrine; the Church differs from place to place in matters of custom and discipline. Rules in effect in one place may not be necessary in another, or may not be expedient. Changed conditions may re quire new regulations. Local customs develop into law. While state laws on certain points differ, none can contravene tile Constitution of the United States and the fundamental law of the land. Church laws and customs vary, but Catholic principles remain always and everyvfflcri: the* Safife' An understanding of this distinction is a mark of discerning Catholic. Catholic Press Month F EBRUARY is Catholic Press Month. Hie local branches of the Laymen’s Association are arrang Dixie Musings ing their annual campaigns for members. Readers in other states who have not sent in their subscriptions for the year are urged to cooperate with the Catholic Press Month campaign by remitting now. Scorning Catholic Consciences T HE Editor of the Journal of the National Education Association follows up the 1937 report of the As sociation entitled “Implications of Social-Economic Goals for Education” by asking: “What policy of edu cation should the nation pursue?” He then proceeds to answer his inquiry against the background of the first of the ten goals the organization proposes, hereditary strength. ~~ The editor’s answer is that “the unfit” should be pre vented from having children by means of segregation, sterilization and voluntary control of conception, and he asserts that “at the same time the knowledge ‘ of birth control should be freely available to all classes, poor as well as rich. The federal statute preventing the distribution of birth control information works a hardship on the underprivileged classes. They' are ex posed to commercial exploitation when they are forced to seek birth control information from sources other than a reputable, competent physician.” Hie same issue states that the number of children en tering public schools now is nearer two million than the three million figure of former years. If this appalling result of birth control and the evil results of steriliza tion make no impression on leaders such as this editor, we should like to remind him that at least twenty cents out of each dollar expended to support the pub lic schools of the United States are paid in taxes by Catholics, that there are over 2,500,000 Catholic chil Dr. C. J. Reilly, of Thomasville, Ga., and Eustis, Fla., follows up our reference to the distinction between sanitarium and sanatorium by com menting that in the latter variation the accent is on the “owe”, wherein it differs from the European war debts, in which the "owe” is silent. Mussolini and Italy are being told how inexcusable their withdrawal from the League of Nations is by cit izens of the United States which re fused to enter the League in the first place. The Associate Editor of the Millen News writes that the basic principle of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” was promulgated nineteen hundred years ago by Him Who voiced the Golden Rule. Eight persons were lynched in 1937, the same number as in 1936, the Tus- kegee Institute announces. There were twenty lynch'ngs in 1935 and fifteen in 1934. All were Negroes. Three were lynched in Florida, two in Mississippi, and one each in Geor gia. Alabama and Tennessee. Of the eight, one was accused of rape. There were fifty-six instances in which officers of the law prevented lynchings, fifty-one of them in the Southern states. In five of them, there was armed resistance by officers of the law. A total of seventy-seven persons were thus saved, five white and seventy-two Negroes, two women and seventy-five men. All the persons lynched were in the hands of officers when taken away from them and murdered. Arm ed resistance by officers is the medi cine mobster's need. McPherson, Huey Long and Rudy Valee from his own university “for God, for country, and for Yale”. Speaking of universities, and not necessarily of Yale, we enter for first honors for naivete the football coaches who take the faculty and alumni seriously when they say that they want no particular emphasis on football. And speaking of football, some of the sports writers in discussing the University of Georgia’s record this fall referred to Georgia’s defeat by Holy Cross in Boston 7 to 6 as a mid season upset. Now comes the Associ ated Press estimate of the relative merit of football teams, and it places Holy Cross fifth in the entire nation for the past five years, outranking every team but Alabama, Minnesota, Pittsburgh and Louisiana State. Holy Cross has not lost a game in two years; in five years, against the strongest kind of competition, it won 39 games, lost six and tied four. Holy Cross meets Georgia in Worcester next year and in Athens the year fol lowing. Rabbi Mordecai M. Thurman, of Wilmington, writing to the Southern Israelite refers to the splendid assist ance given by the people of Wilming ton to the campaign for the relief of Jews in Europe and the Near East, and he makes special reference to the participation of Father James A. Manley, pastor of St. Mary’s Pro- Cathedral in the North Carolina city. The Brunswick Pilot reads that Georgia Tech has dropped Presbyte rian College from its football sched ule and taken on Notre Dame, and says that Former Senator Tom Hef lin ought to make a good-sized Papal plot out of that. dren in our public schools, that hundreds of thousands of Catholic teachers are members of the organization for which he is supposed to be speaking, and that neith er tax-payers who are Catholics, nor Catholic parents with children in public schools nor Catholic teachers can in conscience countenance his flouting of fundamental Catholic teaching on these points. Heartening Reaction T HE spontaneous protest occasioned by the burlesque and in a salacious manner of the Biblical account of the Garden of Eden broadcast over a national net work on the Chase and Sanborn Hour is a heartening indication that there is still a deep and abiding moral sense in the hearts of the American people. This has not always been evident in the reaction of the nation to salacious films and indecent literature. There is this difference between the films and such literature on the one hand and radio broadcasts on the other: The latter invades the most sacred confines of the home. The sponsors of the program have apologized for the sorry performance, and the National Broadcasting Com pany has forbidden the use of the name of the principal in tire skit in the scripts of programs of any station it manages or operates. It is further explained that the performance was preceded by continuous battles over the -wording of the skit, and that on the night of the broadcast the principal delivered her lines in a manner different from what the sponsors expected. But the rendition was hardly different from what the sponsors and others connected with the broadcast should have expected. A man is said not to be responsible for what he does when he is intoxicated, but he is re sponsible for getting intoxicated, and therefore for its results. Those engaging the chief character for the broadcast had no right to expect anything but the per formance she gave. Radio has been slipping from the moral ground it has generally maintained. There are other offenders on the air, although less notorious. Let us hope that they have learned a lesson from this nationwide indignation. The elevation to the presidency of the Union Pacific of William Martin Jeffers recalls that the following Catholic laymen are railroad presi dents: Our own Lawrence A. Downs of the' Illinois Central: Angus Mc Donald, of the Union Pacific: W. P. Kenny, of the Great Northern; Pat rick Joyce, of the Chicago Great Western; W. T. Noonan, of the Alle gheny and Western, and James T. Loree, of the Delaware and Hudson. John J. Pelley, whom Georgia also claims as its own, ret ; red from the oresidency of the New York, New Haven and Hartford to head the As- soc ; ation of American Railways. Pat rick E. Crowley retired as president of the New York Central lines in 1932. In recent weeks death claimed President William J. Harahan, of the Chesapeake and Ohio Rai'road, whose father Pkew’se was a railroad presi dent. Mr. Harahan was a member of the bo°rd of directors of the National Council of Catholic Men, in which capacity it was our oleasore to meet and associate with him. The fidelity to their Catholic faith of men like Mr. Harahan and the others listed he-e ought to be food for thought for those who eons’der the Catholic Church an organization for the igno rant. Commun’sts are instructed, accord ing to Westbrook Perier, to insult po- live, even to the extent of spitting in their faces, and when the police start to nlace them under arrest, to drop on the ground and yell: “He’s killing me! He’s killing me!” The Commu nists are eloouent about Mavor Frank Hague, of Jersey City, “but they should be the last to squawk, be cause he is nowhere near as tough as their man Joe Stalin. ... I see where their man Stalin just cut e’eht more notches on his guns+ock, wh ; ch must look like a bucksaw by now, but Frank Hague hasn’t any notches on his. He hasn’t even got a gun — the sissy!” We don’t know much about Mayor Hague except what we read in the newspapers. There mav be plenty of room for complaint about h’s han dling of the sitoat’on—we just don’t know—but the Communists are estop ped by all the laws of reason from complaining. And by the way, did you notice that the people of Alabama again elected Tom an Ex-Senator, instead of making him a Senator again? On the final day of the Old Year, Augusta paid tribute to one- of the founders of the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Georgia, Mr. Thomas J. O’Leary, who attended the prelim inary meetings and the first conven tion at Macon in 1916. Mr. O’Leary had been active since young man hood in the St. Vincent de Paul So ciety, being president at St. Mary’s when he died; he also served the Knights of Columbus, the Laymen’s Association, the Holy Name Society and other organizations in various capacities. Out of the O’Leary home went a son and a daughter to devote themselves to religion, Father W. D. O’Leary, SJ., superior of the scholas tics at Spring Hill, a former physi cian, and Sister Kathleen Marie of Sacred Heart School in Atlanta. Those who attended the 1936 conven tion of the Catholic Laymen’s Asso ciation at Augusta will recall him as the genial host at the evening recep tion at his and our home. XiJay he rest in eternal peace. Mr. O’Leary’s funeral was the sec ond in December at which His Ex cellency, Bishop O’Hara, presided at the Requiem Mass for the father of a priest. The previous occasion was at the funeral of the venerable and be loved Mr. Timothy I. Sheehan, of the Cathedral Parish, Savannah, father of the Rev. Thomas 1. Sheehan, pas tor at Thomasville, who was cele brant of the Mass, and of Mr. Daniel J. Sheehan, widely known Savannah lay leader. Those who give up their sons and daughters to God in religion find them returned to them a hun dredfold even in this life. Resquiescat in pace. The Hartwell (Ga.) Sun, edited by Louie Morris, appeared recently in new and colored garb of such a hue that at first glance we thought it was red. But we have concluded it was just rosy. A newspaperman told us recently that journalism is a terrible life, but he continues in it because it gives him an opportunity to read the com ics a week in advance. They Have Lost Their Bearings T HE American Legion convention in New York put ex-service men in a reminiscent mood, and. we are reminded of the rookie gob in the Merchant Mar ine on a ship you might call a flivver. The captain one night assigned him as helmsman while he went below to catch a nap, and he directed the pilot to keep the ship pointed directly toward the moon. The night air, the sea breezes, the rolling water, and the gentle moonlight lulled his senses, and he fell asleep at the wheel. The ship veered around and when the gob woke up the moon was at the stern instead of the prow of the craft. He lashed the wheel and roused the skipper “Captain,” he said, “we’ve passed the moon. What’ll I point for now?” Those fortunate enough to be born in religious, Chris tian, Catholic homes are taught to direct their lives to ward God by the light of His Church. Too often young men are lulled into mental slumber by the morally numbing atmosphere of the world, and when they awake to moral questions again, they believe they have pass ed the Church. But they have only turned their back on it SiAd 1 they look' about in bewilderment ioA an other lodestar. Olsen’s Terrible Swedes came to Atlanta to play basketball recently, and the featured player was Tony Wapp, a giant Indian. The disturbers in the ranks of the Union of Social Justice are disturbed by Father Coughlin’s peaceful return to the radio. The Diocese of Louisville, now an Archd’ocese, was created in 1803, the year in which Boston. New York and Philadelphia became Dioceses. It was the first Diocese west of the Alle ghenies; comoared to it, Chicago, Mil waukee. St. Paul, San Francisco and other Archdioceses are youngsters. The Kentucky Diocese was known as that of Bardstown until 1841, when the See was transferred to Louisville. Anent the recent discussion about the Rev. John Haynes Holmes’ criti cism of the Star-Soangled Banner, LeGarde Doughty in The Augusta Chronicle suggests that arrangements be made to have Rudy Valee sing it over the national network, and that we then drown Rudy whether we or not like the anthem. Dr. William Lyon Phelps, “Augus ta’s leading winter sport”, as the late Dr. -Lawton B. Evarri termed Mm, once said there were three persons he would gladly slay, Amy Semple A Chicago native of Ireland, 107 years in this country, discovers that this does not make him a citizen. He came to the United States when he was six, and assumed this made him a citizen. He has been voting since 1875. Nicholas Murray- Butler says that time marches backward, which leads the Greensboro (Ga.) Herald-Journal to observe that he probably never had a ninety-day note in the bank. Mr. Patrick J. Sheridan, of Brook lyn, writes to The Tablet to say that Hon. Joseph P. Kennedy is not the first Catholic envoy from the United States to England, for Hon. Patrick A. Collins was appointed consul-gen eral, the title then, by President Cleveland. Mr. Collins was subse quently elected mayor of Boston three times, when the election of a Democrat was extraordinary. Dr. Patrick F. Scanlan in his col umn in Hie Tablet remarks on the number of Jews included in the re cent purges in Russia and wonders if Stalin has gone anti-Semitic. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette quotes a little boy as telling a new minis ter that his father belonged to the Seventh Day Absentists, which, by the w'ajy 1 , ’ sefenSs to be the dertdmuia- tion with the largest membership in this country,—R. R.