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SIX THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA THE BULLETIN The Official OrgaD of the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Georgia RICHARD REID, Editor 815-816 Lamar Building Augusta. Georgia Subscription Price $2.00 Per Year 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 CECILE FERRY, Augusta. Asst. Exec, Secretary Vol. XIX March 26, 1938 No. 3 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 l 1921 Darrow vs. God C LARENCE DARROW, the most conspicuous agnostic of the decade and one of the most notorious of the generation, is dead, Clarence Darrow whose philoso phy of life was summed up in these declarations: “I feel, as I always have, that the earth is the home, and the only home, of man, and I am convinced that whatever he is to get out of his existence he must get while he is here.” “I am an agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.” God is the judge of Darrow's sincerity. It is beyond the province of any man to evaluate his motives; God alone knows the recesses of Darrow’s heart. We recom mend him to the mercy of God, but in so doing we cannot in conscience join in the hymns of praise be ing offered to this apostle of agnosticism even by Chris tian leaders. There is no way of estimating the damage that Darrow did to the faith of uneducated and half-educated people by his attacks, for instance, on the Bible in the Scopes trial. His specialty was setting himself up as an Ecum enical Council and dogmatically interpreting the Bible, and then ridiculing and demolishing the straw man he had constructed. His line of reasoning was evident also in his discussions of such matters as the Biblical ac count of Jonah and the whale. He first interpreted the passage to suit himself, and then undertook to prove that such an explanation was impossible and foolish. He who insisted on respect for all opinion, no matter how ridiculous, had no respect for the conviction of practically all peoples of all ages and all nations that there exists an Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and that Creator cf Heaven and Earth could ac complish the incidents recorded in the Bible even in the strained way they are described by Darrow. Darorw was not an agnostic because he was ‘ not afraid to think,” but because he did not think through, assuming that he really was an agnostic. Christ claim ed to be the Son of God, true God and true Man, a claim made in a way as historically established as Cae sar's conquest of Gaul and Cicero’s orations to the Ro man Senate. He performed miracles to substantiate His claim, miracles which those of His time hostile to Him could not deny but tried to explain away. It was He Who said that those condemned by God will be cast into hell for all eternity. Darrow did not like that teaching, and because he did not like it he denied it, just as he attempted to wipe God out of the universe by denying His existence. If Darrow's views affected only himself, it would not only be possible but proper to be silent about them. But they had. an unfortunate influence on countless persons whose mental attainments were not sufficient to enable them to detect flaws in the arguments of one skilled in misleading juries, and the thoughtless eulogies by re ligious leaders will have a tendency to deepen that in fluence. tive countries are not, and Bishop Yu-Pin, Vicar- Apostolic of Nanking, gives further evidence of the baselessness of the report to which the Charlotte News refers when he declared in Washington, as reported by the National Catholic Welfare Conference News Ser vice and published in The Bulletin of January 29, that ‘'China is neither Communist nor pro-Communist, and if the Japanese say they are fighting Communism, they have no reason for fighting the Chinese.” Seventeen of Bishop Yu-Pin's thirty-three priests have been kill ed, and several of his churches wresked by Japanese bombs. The Bishop asserted that he had no inten tion of mixing in political matters, but that he felt ob liged to speak out in the name of justice and morality. The Vatican’s vigorous statement, the declaration of the Apostolic Delegate, Bishop Yu-Pin’s assertions and the elementary rules of common sense all demonstrate the absurdity of the allegations in the editorial in the Charlotte News. 1716 editorial’s gratuitous suspicions of the Jesuit Fathers, members of an order which con duct Fordham, Georgetown, Loyola, Marquette, Creigh ton, Santa Clara, Holy Cross and numerous other uni versities and colleges in the United States, who have educated many of the leading, citizens of the South, Catholic and non-Catholic, back to the days of the emi nent North Carolina statesman, William Gaston, are un worthy of any reputable newspaper. o Misleading a University NE George O. Pershing has been around the coun try representing himself as the nephew of General Pershing and delivering addresses in favor of the Spanish Leftists. In an address at the University of North Carolina, for instance, where he was billed as field secretary of the Medical Bureau and North Am erican committee to aid Spanish democracy”, he is quoted as saying that “the government in Spain is sup ported by intellectualists, educators and scientists rather than politicians. Grafters are supporting Franco, logically enough, since the fascists turned from ballots to bullets when they lost the election.” The Spanish Leftists’ domination by Soviet Russia and the Soviet's conception of democracy are too well known to our readers to require us to comment on these remarks. We should like to report, however, that Gen eral Pershing’s office states that this man is not known to the general except through newspaper clippings of his activities, “and if he is at all related, it is so re motely that it would take a geneologist to trace it.” General Pershing’s office also asserts that army records show that one George O. Pershing was sen tenced to the Alcatraz Island prison for four years and nine months on January 26, 1925, when Alcatraz was a military discipline barracks; he was paroled Septem ber 14, 1927, and finally released May 28, 1928. The New York World of January 19, 1929, said that a man giving this name, claiming to be a cousin of General Pershing and admitting serving time at Alcatraz, was knocked clown by a police officer while engaged in a demonstra tion in front of the British Consulate in New York. It appears that the University of North Carolina and the other institutions which have allowed this man to use their lecture platforms because of his alleged dis tinguished connections have been very badly fooled. Dixie Musin&s The coming of spring coincides with another spring, that indicated by the resurgence of Catholic activity in the Bishop’s campaign for Dioce san purposes, one destined to be fol lowed by a harvest season, we are certain, which will make this year forever memorable in the Catholic history of the South. A Catholic laity, devoted to the cause of Catholic Action, at the call of their Bishop swung into action overnight from Tennessee and Ala bama to the Carolinas, the Atlantic and Florida. The final chapter of the campaign is soon to be written, and its brilliant content is already a sured. The zeal of the laity of Georgia is a national by-word. They have demonstrated their loyalty in a man ner which has won the admiration of the nation. They have never al lowed the obstacles confronting them or their numerical handicaps to be an excuse for inertia. They regard the project placed before them by their Bishop as an opportunity, par ticipation in which is a privilege. Those who know the laity of Geor gia, men and women, and the clergy with whom they labor, can have no doubt of the result of the campaign. w Unworthy Suspicions T HE Charlotte, N. C., News of February 28, com menting on a report from the Japanese foreign office that Chinese soldiers had kidnapped three Jesuit jrriests, expressed tire opinion that instead of being kid napped they have been captured as prisoners of war who, under certain circumstances, may be justly and legally executed. “It does not seem entirely unlikely,” says the edi torial! “that these Jesuits have been guilty of lending aid and comfort to the Japanese as against the Chi nese. For of all the Catholic orders, the Jesuits are most immediately subject to the Pope. And it is of record also that, directly after the beginning of the Japanese attack on China, Pius XI officially accepted the Japanese claim that it was all bv way of opposing the Reds, and instructed all Catholic priests and orders in China to aid the Japanese in this ‘crusade against Communism’ in every way they cou’d.” It is a matter of record that the Vatican and the Apostolic Delegate to the United States have officially and vigorously denied the reports to which the Char lotte Nev.'S refers, a denial emphasized in the October 30 issue of The Bulletin on its front page. The Apostolic Delegate in his statement said that the alleged instruc tions “were conceived by some irresponsible source with the manifest purpose of deceiving the American public on the Vatican's policy of strict neutrality.” While the Vatican is neutral, citizens of the respec Pledges Written on Water HEN the United States, in response to urgent overtures and promises of great trade advant ages coupled with a solemn pledge not to permit Soviet propaganda in the United States, recognized the Soviet Republic, The Bulletin expressed the conviction that the prospective trade advantages would not materialize and that the Reds had no intention of curbing the activities of the Soviet Reds here. Even before the ink was dry on the agreements, officials of the Soviet were explain ing away the pledge of freedom of worship for citizens of the United States in Russia. When the Red propaganda from Russia, agitating for an overthrow of our form of government by violent means if necessary, assumed such proportions that some explanation from the Soviet in the light of its promises was demanded, the Soviet blandly asserted that it was responsible only for acts of the government and not for those of the Communist International. There were two major fallacies in this excuse: If the Soviet could not control such propaganda here, it had no right to promise to do so ,and the fact that it could control it and anything else of that nature from Russia is patent to anyone who lias even a meagre knowledge of how completely the government dictatorship dominates life there. Now the Soviet goes a step further. As reported in the previous issue of The Bulletin, Joseph Stalin, dic tator of Russia, asserts that "we must increase and strengthen the international proletarian ties of the work ing class of the U. S. S. R. with the working class of bourgeois countries. We must organize political help of the working class of bourgeois countries to the work ing class of our country in case of military attack. . . . Support of our revolution by the workers of all coun tries and particularly the victory of these workers in at least several countries is a necessary condition for com plete guarantee of the first conquered country (Russia) from attempts at intervention and restoration.” Such a bold, even brazen, statement by Dictator Stalin, should, in the opinion of the New York Post, “clear the air completely. Americans who have ap proved Communist aqtivities in the United States, who have felt that Soviet Russia was at least friendly to democracy, are now undeceived.” In a teachers’ examination the par ticipants were asked what is meant by the Alabama arrow.” They didn’t know. Some of them wrote to edi tors, who likewise didn’t know. They asked Mr. Haskin, who got his re search department busy, to learn that the Alabama arrow” is Mr. Dixie Howell, of the Alabama football eleven, who, to quote The Tampa Tribune, can “knock over a thimble at 30 paces with his arrow-like pass.” How people who didn’t know that expected to be allowed to teach school surpasses o.ie’s com prehension. Out in Oregon a hotel proprietor referred to some girls as beautiful but dumb. One of them snapped. “The Lord made us beautiful so you men would love us; and He made us dumb so we would love you.” is different”. Gill, “maybe well was.” “Well”, said Mrs. Mc- they thought Crom- Father George J. Reid of Clarks ville, Texas, who died recently, for merly practiced law in Pittsburgh with his brother. Judge Ambrose B. Reid, now and for many years pre siding judge of the Court of Com mon Pleas in Pittsburgh. Judge Reid subscribed for The Bulletin regularly for his priestly brother, and both al ways manifested a deep interest in the work. The editor of The Bulle tin tried to trace a relationship with these distinguished sons of the Church, but never succeeded. He has likewise failed to establish any relationship with Father Charles J. Reid, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church, Yonkes, N. Y., who in recent years observed the golden jubilee of his ordination, an occasion graced by the presence of the Cardinal-Archbiship of New York. Nor with Father Aubrey J. Reid, S. J., of Kansas City, Mo., whom we met in recent years in Chicago. Perhaps we are related to the most famous member of the family, the one mentioned in the Bible, thg reed shaken by the wind. O. O. McIntyre in one of his last columns said that in a fog George Creel could pass for Ex-King Alfonso, which prompted us at the time to re mark that if the fog was thick enough we might pass for Robert Taylor. In St. Louis recently, Thomas Franklin, a Negro who had served as valet for three Archbishops over a period of 72 years, died at 91, and Archbishop Glennon delivered the sermon at his funeral. Neal O'Hara, syndicated column writer who served at Camp Hancock in Augusta during the World War, reports that “due to Rhode Island’s so-called 'rotten borough’ system, less than 5 1-2 percent of the state’s voters can elect a majority of the state senate.” One would hardly think that there could be so much injustice m a s ate so small that they once talked of making it into a miniature golf course. The fading of the fad saved it. The Miami Herald believes that it is not that Southern men are more colite. but that they can uncover their bald heads without exposing them to the danger of catching cold. Every so often someone in the South starts a movement against the custom of men taking off their hats in the presence of ladies on an eleva tor. We should like to register our selves as strongly against the move ment against the custom. With so many Southerners suspicious of a Democratic administration and the North so filled with hospitality that they have hostesses on trains and planes, we must have some distin guishing characteristic. “Tobacco Road”, which ran some thing like four years in New York, is described by a magazine as “physi cally and verbally as dirty as any play U. S. playgoers have seen. In thirteen cities, from Albuquerque, N. M., to Boston, Mass., its producers have had to pay lawyers to fight lecal censorship. In Chicago, where a brief filed in the U. S. Court of Appeals called the play ‘a garbage pail of indecent dialogue and de generate exhibitionism’, legal defense cost nearly $75,000.” The critical ma gazine was not a sodality organ but Time, the sophisticated weekly news magazine. The passing of McIntyre leaves a void in the American Press which it will be as difficult to fill as that made by the passing of ill Rogers from the screen. McIntyre was the butt of cynical jibes from envious jornalists who attributed his success to accident instead of to the insight into human nature which has his. Seldom did anything said by Mc Intyre make his column unfit for the family circle. If his philosophy of life was inadequate, he did not seek to turn theologian and impose his own private opinions on his millions of readers with the assurance of one with a divine relation. The “worrying rock” in North Georgia doesn’t appeal to Ernest Camp, editor of the Monroe Tribune and poet-laureate of the Georgia Press Association. “A person can worry anywhere,” says Editor Camp “and I’d like to encourage ’em to giggle and grin. Something on the order of a blarney stone would be better and I may decide to give one to the City of Monroe. In the mean time anyone having a nice blarney stone they'd like to contribute to the cause might confer with me.” “I am tired of marching through Georgia on slumming trips with Ers- kine Caldwell just lor the sake of a cheap laugh,” Sidney B. Whipple, dramatic critic, writes in The New York World-Telegram in a vehement review of “Journeyman”, which seeks to portray incredible goings-ons in an imaginary Rocky Comfort, Ga. The New York Times reviewer comforts himself with the thought that he be lieves “the worst is over in the thea tre for a long time to come.” The Madison Madisonian, edited by the Christian-hearted W. T. Bacon, editorially mourns the death of an afflicted colored boy who made a living going on errands. “Life meant little to him,” Editor Bacon writes, ‘ but we know of no one who so lived up to the opportunities and the chances and the encouragement he received. His affliction perhaps came about as the result ot some one’s neglect of him when a child. At the final roundup when the roll is called we are thinking that Jimmie will lead many who stand much higher in this life.” If censorship comes to the stage— or the press^it wilt be brought about not so much by reformers as by recreant members of the mofes- sion. just as it was the sins of the brewers and distillers which was crimarily responsible for prohibi tion. The daughter of Admiral Perry, who brought Japan into the family of nations is the wife of the United States Ampbassador to Japan, Mr. Grew, again demonstrating that the world is a small place after all, or something like that. Ralph McGill of The Atlanta Con stitution. who went to Europe on a fellowship, could not understand why the Irish still hate Cromwell. None of them knew Cromwell, he told Mrs. McGill. Hating him at this iate date is stubbornness. “Is it?” she answered. “Is it, new?, And; have I not listened to you curse the Yankees? And were you acquainted with General W. T. Sherman?” “Well”, said Ralph, “that E. M. Wise writing in the Hosch, ton, Ga., News, says he liked France but found Italy strange. “I could understand why the French people love Southern France but I can't understand why all the people of Italy do not move to America. They must get mighty homesick living in so strange a place as Italy.” Yet some people get all excited when they hear that the Pope is about to leave his strange country for ours. Editor J. J. Thomasson of the Car- roll County Times, is out of step with the “Methodist Episcopal Church, South, irreconcilables” who are “determined that they just will not work in harness with Northern members, they will kick out of traces first. We greatly fear that when they get up to heaven St. Peter will have to build his fences enclosing the Methodists a little higher to keep these fellows from jumping out and coming back to Atlanta.” Well bet a good ten cent cigar that Editor Thomasson is a Baptist. The London Evening Standard says that Count von Galen, Catholic Bishop of Muenster, Germany, was preaching in his Cathedral in West phalia on the part of the Church in the education of the young, when a uniformed Nazi in the congregation arose and shouted: “What do people who have no wife and children know about bringing up the young?” To which the Bishop immediately and forceably retorted: “I will not stand for any derogatory remarks about the Fuehrer in this Church!” —R. R.