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FOUR THE BULLETIN CF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA SEPTEMBER 17, 1955, HulUtitt The Official Organ of the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Georgia, Incorporated JOHN MARKWALTER, Editor 416 Eighth Street, Augusta, Ga. " ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1954-1955 J. P. MEYER, Columbus President E. M. HEAGARTY, Waycross Honorary Vice-President MRS. L. E. MOCK, Albany Vice-President DAMON J. SWANN, Atlanta V. P., Publicity GEORGE GINGELL, Columbus V. P., Activities RAWSON HAVERTY, Atlanta V. P., Membership JOHN M. BRENNAN, Savannah Secretary JOHN T. BUCKLEY, Augusta Treasurer JOHN MARKWALTER, Augusta Executive Secretary MISS CECILE FERRY, Augusta Financial Secretary ALVIN M. McAULIFFE, Augusta Auditor Vol. XXXVI Saturday, September 17, 1955 No. 8 Entered as second class matter at the Post Office, Monroe, Georgia, and accepted for mailing at special rate of postage provided by para graph (e) of section 34.40, Postal Laws and Regulations. Member of N. C. W. C. News Service, the Catholic Press As sociation of the United States, the Georgia Press Association, and the National Editorial Association. Published fortnightly by the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Geor gia, Inc., with the Approbation of the Most Reverend Archbishop- Bishop of Savannah-Atlanta, and Of the Right Reverend Abbot Ordinary of Belmont. 24,178 Inquiries; 2,418 Instructions Is the Catholic Church a Menace to Democracy! But Why Don’t YOU Pray to the Saints? It is easy for Catholics to recognize these lines as titles to the familiar Knights of Columbus advertisements which appear in our leading maga zines and newspapers. Perhaps you have wondered if these advertisements are bringing results. Through July 1st of this year, 1,767,890 in quiries have been received by the Religious Information Bu reau located at St. Louis. 167,639 have enrolled in Religious Instruction. Here are some figures which will perhaps bring the pic ture of the splendid job the Knights are doing into sharper focus. Let’s see what’s been done- in Georgia. Let’s see the influence of the ad which has appeared in the Atlanta paper, the Columbus paper, in almost every daily in the state. Figures released by the Supreme Council Knights of Columbus reveal that as of July 1st, 1955, 24.178 inquiries have come through its St. Louis office postmarked from the cities and towns of Georgia. 2,505 inquiries have been re ceived during the first six months of 1955. 2,418 of these in quiries have enrolled for instruction through the Knights. Who knows how many have found their way to the Parish Priest through their contacts with the K. of C.? 348 Georgians have enrolled for instruction this year. When you see the K. of C. advertisement don’t think of it as not affecting you. 24,178 inquries, 2,418 instructions prove it does. Problem Of The Arab Refugees THIS WORLD OF OURS (By Richard Paitee) BEIRUT —On the way back from a day spent with the new ly designate Patriarch of the Lebenese Maronites, about 20 miles from Beirut, I visited two of the camps, established f o r| Arabs who| were forced to] leave Palestine when the state of Israel came] into being, after] the termination 1 of the British! mandate. Father Francis Kennedy from the United States, in charge of the Pontifical Mission in this country, took me there to see firsthand what is being done in Lebanon to care for the home less and displaced under the responsibility of the United Na tions. It is a moving and depres sing sight. PERMANENT STAGNATION Lebanon has not received a very' large number of these un fortunates in view of its own smallness and the impossibility for it to absorb a hundred thou sand refugees into its economy. The result is a sort of permanent stagnation, in which families by the dozens are doomed to look forward to an endless future in which there is little hope and not much more than existence on the basis of an international dole. In the beginning, Father Ken nedy indicated, it was especially urgent to separate Christians from Moslems since some ten per cent of the refugees were of the Christian faith—almost all Catholic. Once this had been ac complished, the next job was to set up something in the way of living quarters. One of the two camps I saw was an assortment of shacks in which families live under con ditions of the greatest misery. The other was a new and per manent construction in which concrete homes, with a chapel and school, are being erected. Land was ceded by a commu nity of Maronite religious and, with international aid, a village is being built to care for the refugees. From the physical point of view their situation will have improved vastly in the new quarters, although the moral im plications still remain—namely, that the more permanent and decent the homes are the more certain it is that they will re main here indefinitely. HOME IS PALESTINE It is a hard fact, about which far too little has been said in our country, that these refugees are here and in Syria and Jor dan, as well as in the Gaza Strip, because they were cast out of their homes in Palestine at the time Israel was created. The ar gument is sometimes advanced that this is all very well, but that the best thing would be for the Palestinians to make the best of the mess and settle in any one of the Arab countries where there is space and a chance for the future. There are various difficulties confronting such a solution. The first is that many left their homes assuming that they would return; and since they have liv ed in Palestine for centuries, no other place is home. It is as though a resident of Baltimore were tossed out of his home and after spending years in a camp in, let us say. Scotland, was told that he could go to some other English-speaking country such as British Honduras and live there. Such a step might be theore tically possible, but the Pales tinian — especially the Pales tinian Christian—has not even a remote desire to try to settle in Yeme nor Saudi Arabia where the atmosphere and outlook are totally different from anything he has ever known. The most forceful argument is that these Palestinians want to go home. And home is Palestine, and no other place. EXIST ON CHARITY The Lebanese government has received many of these refugees. Some can work in jobs that do . not require an official labor per mit. But the Lebanon is made up of a delicately balanced assort ment of religious groups. The influx of thousands of Palesti- anians, either Christians or Mos lems, can very easily upset this equilibrium which is the basis of the political divisions of the nation. Moreover, the existence of the refugee problem is a standing argument for the Arabs with re spect to the injustice they allege was committed against them in turning Palestine over to Israel. If the problem disappeared, it would be tacit acceptance of the existence of Israel—an attitude which the Arabs are not at all disposed to take. If one looks to the future there seems little in the way of hope for these forlorn thousands — wards now of' the U.N. and des tined to live and die under con ditions not of their own choos ing. One cannot but feel a pro found sense- of pity and compas sion for these unfortunates who run the risk of becoming the forgotten of this world. It is to be hoped that, even in a world made callous, by misery and calamity, there is still a place-in the hearts of men from which a ray of hope can come to these thousands, who have been eject ed from their ancestral land, and doomed to exist on the charity of the United Nations.- The First Amendment (CATHOLIC NEWS) The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” A Senate subcommittee headed by Senator Thomas C. Hennings, Jr., of Missouri is preparing to make a study of the Amendment to find out if it has been properly interpreted and if it is being faithfully obeyed. The subcommittee is sending out a questionnaire in eight parts “to all persons interested in the subject and to persons who desire to testify at public meetings” tentatively set for October 3. The second query, after routine questions, reads: “Do you regard the phrase ‘make no law respecting an establish ment of religion’ as a prohibition against any direct or in direct aid to churches of religious sects?” And: “Do you re gard the language as banning preferential treatment of any particular church or religious sect while permitting govern ment aid to religion generally or to the various churches and sects on a non-discriminatory basis?” If these questions were addressed to the Founding Fathers who drew up the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they would no doubt have been puzzled by the reason for them For it is a matter of record that the Founding Fathers and their successors authorized direct aid to religion without any question of its constitutionality. Exempting religious property from taxes and providing chaplains, paid from tax funds, for the Armed Forces of the nation are but two of numerous examples. — That those opposed to religion also interpreted the First Amendment in this way is demonstrated by the fact that they repeatedly tried to have the Constitution amended to forbid what they now say was forbidden from the beginning. Every such effort was rejected. But the Supreme Court in the McCollum case, ignoring the history behind the First Amendment and the laws and tradition since its adoption, topk a step toward accomplishing by indirection what the anti-religionists have never been able to accomplish directly. Congressional hearings are intended to provide our law making bodies with information helpful to them in the enact ing of legislation. It is ardently to be hoped that the investi gation and scheduled hearings will be effective in defeating the efforts of those who would make the First Amendment a weapon against religion and an ally of atheism. THE BACKDROP By CHARLES LUCEY SEASON OPENS FOR HATE, RECRIMINATION , The* intense bigotry of Know- nothingism, which debased the mid-nineteenth century, and the disfiguring Ku Kluxism of the 1920’s are far behind. Yet, as a political reporter criss-crossing America in national elections every two years, I am convinced of the continuing force of racial and religious prejudice in this country’s voting. It is almost surely true that there is greater tolerance in many sections of the U.S. than i there was 30 years ago; but i votes still are cast against candi- | dates because they are Catholic, I or Jewish, or have been a little ; too friendly to Negroes, or for me other twisted concept of at is “American.” This is brought to mind by signs of a heating-up, a year in advance, of the 1956 Presidenti al election' campaign. The Re publicans have held a “school” to instruct party workers, na tionally, how to campaign more effectively. Ex- President Truman ha. opened a vigorous attack on the Republicans, and the Demo- e s have other big meetings coming up to rally their forces for 1956. LIES AND SCURRILITY The patern is only the normal one in these matters. But seeing it begin again turns attention to the fact that nothing whatever has been done by law since 1952 to control the printing and Cir culation of lies and scurrility in U.S. politics, or to make such offenses more severely punish able. In 1946 this reporter covered the last campaign of the late Senator Theodore G. (The Man). Bilbo in Mississippi. There may have been dirtier campaigns in recent American political history but it seems doubtful. One sticky June night that year, I sat in a little country courthouse in Starkville, Miss., and heard Senator Bilbo tell an audience how to put the fear of God in Negroes’ hearts by visiting them a night or two be fore election and warning them not to go to the polls to vote. COARSELY FUNNY—MAYBE In that same campaign Bilbo was denounced by his opponents in about as earthy terms as can be used iri a political campaign. One circular described him as “stinking and sweating, sweat ing and stinking lik t e a goat caught in a gourd vine.” Coarse ly funny, maybe, at the time, but not quite the ground on which to be deciding a seat for the United States Senate. A couple of years later I cov ered a bitter U.S. Senate cam paign in North Carolina. Senator Frank P. Graham was being stigmatized be.cause of his friendly attitude toward the Negro — the fact that he had named a qualified young Negro as an alternate to the U.S. Mili tary Academy at West Point be came a statewide issue. Such a feeling is by no means confined to tne South. Some times in the North a surreptiti ous campaign is waged against a man because he is a Catholic or Jew. THE ‘BALANCED’ TICKET Politicians recognize the im portance of racial lines to a point where in some states it is merely the normal thing to try to “balance” a party ticket >by getting, say, a Protestant for governor, a Jew for lieutenant- governor, a Catholic for secre tary of state, etc. Sometimes the play is to get an Italian for at torney general, a Pole for state auditor, and so on. It cuts right across the American idea but it goes on all the time. It wars with the American idea, to talk of a Protestant or Catholic or Jewish vote. In 1952 President Eisenhower was attacked viciously in litera ture circulated in many states in the pre-convention primary election campaigns. Some sought to portray him as a tool of Jew ish interests. Some attacked the (Continued on Page Five)