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THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA
JUNE 8, 1957,
IttUrtitt
The Official Organ of the Catholic Laymen’s
Association of Georgia, Incorporated
JOHN MARKWALTER, Editor
416 Eighth Street, Augusta, Ga.
38 . Saturday, June 8, 1957 No. 1
~ T ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1955-1956
JOHN M. BRENNAN, Savannah __ President
E. M. HEAGARTY, Wa.ycross — Honorary Vice-President
MRS. L. E. MOCK, Albany ] Vice-President
TOM GRIFFIN, Atlanta _ Vice-President
DAMON J. SWANN, Atlanta - V. P. Publicity
GEORGE GINGELL, Columbus V P Activities
NICK CAMERIO, Macon Secretary
JOHN T. BUCKLEY, Augusta Treasurer
JOHN MARKWALTER, Augusta Executive Secretary
MISS CECILE FERRY, Augusta Financial Secretary
ALVIN M. McAULIFFE, Augusta Auditor
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 Association
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, the Most Reverend Bishop of Atlanta, and the
Right Reverend Abbot Ordinary of Belmont.
(j licit editorial
The Right Of Free Speech
(THE NEW YORK CATHOLIC NEWS)
We have spoken previously in these columns of the
American Civil Liberties Union’s attack on Catholic and
other movements to evaluate films, stage plays and publica
tions from the standpoint of morality.
The Augusta, Ga., Chronicle, “the South’s Oldest News
paper,” says in an editorial by the editor, Robert L. M. Parks,
that “the American Civil Liberties Union, as its name im
plies, is an organzation whose prime purpose should be to
protect people’s civil rights. Yet it is urging that one of these
rights be denied—the right to object to filth as it appears in
literature, so called, in motion pictures and on the stage.”
The Chronicle recalls that the Civil Liberties Union “has
just launched an attack on the Roman Catholic Church on a
charge of ‘censorship.’ It is a broad attack including not only
the Catholic Church but other religious groups and narent-
teachers associations, and takes them to task for blacklisting
and imposing boycotts on books, pictures and plays which
these groups deem obscene or injurious to the morals of those
who read them or view them. Such practices, says the or
ganization, are ‘seriously violative of the principle of free
dom.’
Mexico Revisited
THIS WORLD OF OURS
(By Richard Paltee)
It has been a vast pleasure, if
only a few days, to revisit Mexi
co City after a thirteen year ab
sence. I lived there for fourteen
months in 1943-44 and was eager
to return if only for a glimpse
and an evalua
tion based on
hurried impres
sions of the
transformati o n
of things in this
space of time.
It has become
a commonplace
in every coun
try of the world
that to be away for a couple of
years is to fail to recognize the
place. In many cases this is lit
erally true. Few nations give me
the same senation of booming
progress and incredible change
that Mexico does.
PROGRESS AND EXPANSION
This recontact with Mexico be
gan at El Paso where I nipped
over the line at Ciudad Juarez
for a few hours. I had never been
in the place before and assumed,
quite mistakenly, that it was
probably a down at the heel bor
der town, composed largely of
honky tonks and taverns. I dis
covered a growing, flourishing
city 'of two hundred thousand
people, just erected into a diocese
and prosperous beyond anything I
would have imagined. From there
I flew to Mexico City for a hasty
visit, just enough to refresh mem
ories and get the feel of the thing.
Obviously returning to a coun
try with which one has had in
timate associations in the past is
not quite' the same as entering
for the first time. One comes after
a great deal of travel and ef-
POAU Fans The Fires
THE
forts at summing up impressions
of the general nature of the at
mosphere and the trend events are
taking. Mexico thirteen years af
ter, if I may express it that way,
struck me as well on the way tow
ard the achievement of what has
been lacking for generations in
the Hispanic American world—a
a social class based on industrial
production, as well as commerce
or agriculture.
Mexico City has expanded so
much, over the last decade or so
that aside from the Paseo de la
Reforma and the area between
the Zocalo and the Palace of Fine
Arts, I found myself quite lost.
New highways, four lane routes,
and modern skyscrapers fill the
panorama so completely that al
most all that was reminiscent of
the Mexico I had known years
ago had been submerged in this
architectural and planning boom.
ANTI-CLERICALISM DYING
Long accustomed to the incred
ible vulgarity of the professional
revolutionaries and their descen
dants who still continued a dozen
years ago to prate the same plat
itudes and commonplaces about
“medieval clericalism,” “the ty
ranny of the clergy” and the “long
arm of nefarious Rome,” it was
good to discover that this kind
of thing seems to have disap
peared. There are, as in France,
a few die-hards who still cling
to an anti-clericalism that went
out of fashion about the time of
Leon Gambetta in Paris. But the
general tone of the press and of
public utterance is entirely dif
ferent and far more civilized.
Mexico seems to have come a
long way out of the jungle of
marxist dialectics, anti-religious
frenzy and fake liberalism. Today
it is one of the, most sober and
sedate of all American republics.
It seems probable that events
such as those taking place in Co
lumbia or that took place re
cently in Argentina cannot occur
in the Mexico of today. The state
of mind is no longer atune with
the sort of thing that makes for
the chaos and anarchy that pre
vailed for so long after the revo
lution of 1900.
From the point of view of the
Church and Catholic interests I
am confident that a return to the
old persecution would be almost
unthinkable. The people are no
longer interested and no longer
moved by appeals to that type of
demagoguery. This is true also
because of the whole international
atmosphere in which the con
stant attacks on human dignity
from the Soviet side have made
people conscious as never before
that persecution of religion is
one of the favorite instruments
of Soviet and Soviet inspired dic
tatorship.
MEXICO A HAVEN
Mexico has come to pride itself
on its hospitality to the perse
cuted of all lands and as a haven
for those of contradictory opin
ions. It would be difficult cer
tainly in 1957 to do what Calles
did in 1926 and not bring down
a torrent of condemnation. This
may be a negative factor in pre
venting a recurrence of the agi
tation of the past. But if even a
quick. glance at contemporary
Mexico is valid, I am equally con
vinced that the temper of the
people today would admit of no
repetition of the crude and brutal
tactics of thirty years ago.
BACKDROP
By JOHN C. O’BRIEN
It is nothing of the sort. Anyone in this country is free
to object to filth in whatever form it appears, and such an
objection, even if it results in a boycott, is both legitimate
and wholesome. The ACLU would have good ground for com
plaint if such censorship were imposed by the federal gov
ernment or by any other official agency which took it upon
itself to censor the reading and theatre-going habits of "the
American people. That would be real censorship.
“But to say that a church or a religious organization or
a parent-teachers group has no right to call attention to nasti
ness and recommend that it be eschewed is to put the stamp
of approval on such filth through the medium of silence.”
Editorials such as this are not unusual in newspapers
oinside the metropolitan areas. Columnists in our metropoli
tan press from time to time express similar views. But metro
politan editorial columns rarely if ever mention the subject
except to view with alarm movements for moral evaluation
ot publications and entertainment and their natural result,
the withdrawing of patronage from those deemed offensive.
Stepped-Up Activity Reminds
That Pope Talked On Atom
Problem Some 16 Years Ago
(By J. J. Gilbert)
WASHINGTON,— The question
of disarmament has taken on a
sort of urgency here. There is a
feeling that something must be
done about it soon, otherwise it
may not be possible to stem the
arms race.
Secretary of State Dulles re
flects this official belief in his
meetings with newsmen. “In this
disarmament task,” he has said,
“the important thing is to get
going somewhere, somehow, just
as rapidly as possible.’
We have asked Russia to agree
to “a substantial inspection zone”
as a starting point for an East-
W e s t disarmament agreement
This zone could be outside of Eur
ope, because some of our allies
on the continent do not want it
there. It could be in the arctic,
or any place where inspection
could easily be started. It should
(Continued on Page Ten) <
Spokesmen for Protestants and
Other Americans United for Sep
aration of Church and State
maintain their activities in sup
port of their concept of the Con
stitutional ban against an estab
lished religion
are in no sense
motivated b y
prejudice
against the Ro-
m a n Catholic
Church.
Such a dis
claimer, how
ever, is hard to
reconcile with the heckling tone
of the latest monthly bulletin of
the organization which goes by
the name of “Church and State.”
Not since “The Menace”—which
was widely circulated when the
Ku Klux Klan was at the height
of its power—became defunct,
has so much animus against the
Church been spread upon paper as
in the POAU publication.
If, as the POAU spokesmen
pretend, their sole purpose is to
defend the principle of separation
of church and state, one would
expect that their official organ
would limit itself to a dispassion
ate presentation of their side of
the controversy. But many of the
articles in the current issue of
‘Church and State” bear not at
all upon that issue but upon
teachings and practices of the
Roman Catholic Church to which
the editors seem violently op
posed.
PLOT OF THE PRELATES?
No one, of course, questions the
right of POAU, or any group, to
oppose the use of tax funds to
provide transportation to and
from school for pupils attending
parochial establishments. But
POAU is not content to state the
arguments in support of its po
sition. Its aim seems to be to fan
the fires of bigotry by deriding
the Church and many of its teach
ings.
Take, for example, the lead ed
itorial which appears under the
heading, “The First Bite.” This
is an obvious attempt to convince
the American people that the ul
timate aim of the American Hier
archy is to establish Roman Ca
tholicism as the official religion
of the United States.
Transportation o f parochial
school pupils in tax-supported
buses, — which, incidentally the
Supreme Court has ruled does not
violate any Constitutional pro
visions — is only the “first ob
jective” of the Church, the editor
assures his readers.
“What the second objective of
Catholic power may be we are
not sure” he continues. “It might
seek further public grants for its
so-called ‘social services’ — hos
pitals, orphanages-and the like.
Or, intoxicated with its success, it
might drive boldly for clergy sal
aries, or operating budgets for
parishes or construction costs of
churches. It might even seek rec- -
ognition as America’s official
church.”
No fair-minded person can be
lieve that this gross misstatement
of the Church’s position in the so-
calied school bus controversy was
written with any purpose in mind
other than to inflame bigots
j against the Church by conjuring
| up such bug-a-boos as state-sup
ported clergy, state supported pa
rishes and official recognition of
Catholicism as the state religion.
THINLY VEILED ASPERSIONS
For the editorial, however, it
can be said that, unfair though it
may be, it does have a bearing on
the issue of separation of church
and state. But can as much be
said for another article, appearing
under the snide title, “For Serv
ices Rendered?”, which casts thin
ly , veiled aspersions upon the
Americanism of two Catholic
members of Congress?
The article notes that Rep.
John W. McCormack, of Massa
chusetts, and Rep. John J. Roon
ey, of Brooklyn, N. Y.—described
as “two of the most active spokes
men for Catholic policy in Con
gress”—had recently been award
ed the. Papal honor — rank of
Knight Commander of the Order
of St. Gregory with star.
What bearing the conferring of
a Papal honor on two members
of Congress can possibly have on
the issue of separation of church
and state is not readily discern
ible. Yet POAU raises the ques
tion that it “may” violate a pro
vision of the Constitution which
forbids persons holding public of
fice from accepting “any present,
emolument,, office or title, of any
kind, r 'from"'(.any king, prince or
foreign state,” without consent of
Congress.
It should be obvious to anyone
—it probably was obvious to the
writer of the article—that the
Constitution provisions in no way
(Continued on Page Five)