Communications

...Other forms are looked upon as necessary compromises...

...In the past, there was some excuse for the apparent indifference of the Catholic Church to the Negro-American mission field...

...It is to be hoped that a brighter day is coming...

...The Rockefeller Foundation has made a recent investigation and found that over 90 percent of the population of this island suffers from these three diseases...

...They thus learn a useful trade and keep alive the traditional employment of Arab women, and also develop a greater understanding of the beauty of their own inheritance of eastern embroidery and design...

...He pointed out that in the 400 years that America has been open to settlement, the Catholic Church in the United States has made only four or five Negro priests—that Catholic schools of higher learning are closed to Catholic Negro students...

...The Catholic Women's League organized a Nativity play 328 THE COMMONWEAL January 27, 1926 acted by the children on Christmas, 1924, and this last Christmas they had another happy gathering...

...There is no doubt but that when the sincere white Catholic understands the situation he will measure up to it, just as he has always done in other cases...

...But the principle is clearly a part of Catholic social teaching...

...This statement is sufficiently general to permit a government to impose more than the minimum of justice...

...TO the Editor:—Having read with great interest the delightful article on Catholic Women at Work, in The Commonweal of December 9, 1925, may I venture to write.a short account of a special branch of work done by the Catholic Women's League of England namely, the school for English and weaving established by them in 1923 in Bethlehem, Palestine...

...The country itself was a mission field under foreign jurisdiction...

...DIFFUSION OF OWNERSHIP Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:—The economic program which I tentatively phrased in an earlier issue of The Commonweal aims at a very wide diffusion of private ownership, either cooperatively held and managed, or only directed cooperatively...

...and that no remedial aid has been extended by the American people, save the Y. M. C. A., which has one single establishment in the capital of the island, San Juan...

...The secular press makes a great deal over the non-Catholic Negro schools and colleges—the achievements of Hampton, Tuskeegee, and other non-Catholic colored institutions are heralded abroad...

...These schools serve to facilitate the growth of group-spirit among the Negroes, and the pressure exerted upon the stray one who becomes a Catholic is tremendous, especially in those localities where the manifestation of race prejudice animates some who call themselves "Catholics...

...He gave the reason as being race prejudice in the Church and among the white priesthood...

...In this department the girls are not only taught free (as they are in the school) but also paid for their work...

...CATHOLIC WOMEN AT WORK London, England...

...Children cannot be blamed, if under the racial and social attractions, coupled with Catholic indifference, or in some places actual hostility, they succumb to the allurements of Protestantism...

...R. A. McGowan...

...Yet, in both cases, transfer of property rights by forced sale seems necessary in order to supplement voluntary efforts to establish economic conditions that will harmonize with personal dignity and be less dangerous to human rights...

...If whole bodies of Catholics may fall away through lack of Catholic training, Catholic associations, a Catholic atmosphere in a hostile or indifferent environment, what may be expected of a people, who, living side by side with many Catholic races, are almost totally ignored by them in so far as any attempts to bring them into the Church is concerned...

...Woodlock's doubt is well-founded, then both the Irish land laws and Governor Smith's housing proposal are wrong...

...and that this Church lags behind all the rest...

...The writer of this letter had the great happiness of spending Christmas and Epiphany last year in Bethlehem...

...we have no Catholic Negro papers of any consequence...

...It is well known that in this country, there are those who make a religion of the accident of race...

...If Mrs...

...Eighty-five percent of the population of Porto Rico, which is estimated at 1,300,000, lives from hand to mouth—mere peonages attached to the soil, save for the political freedom to> which they are entitled, but which under such hopeless economic conditions are of practically no value to them...

...It is assumed, of course, that no injustice is done in the transfer...

...Socialistic influences are beginning to be felt among us and the danger of radicalism among Negroes is not a fancied one...

...I want to respectfully call your attention to the fact that very similar conditions prevail here in Porto Rico...

...No one who has enjoyed this wonderful experience can ever forget midnight Mass in the Grotto...

...Mary Frances Kern, "an unwearied worker among the poor little derelicts in the Philippines," should turn part of her attention to the island of Porto Rico which has been under the American flag for the same period of time as the Philippines, she could find here a vast and fertile field in which to sow the seed of charity of her noble heart...

...We now have seventy children and if only we could obtain more financial support we could largely increase this number...

...In Bethlehem, Catholics number 50 percent of the population —most of the remaining are Moslems or Greek orthodox...

...What if we are not very rich or very wise, so long as faith and hope and charity are in our hearts...

...They simply are ignorant of the Church and her teachings...

...The first method suggested for establishing it is to speed up and strengthen voluntary organizations that now are moving toward cooperative control and ownership and that, normally, in doing so inflict no injustice...

...If Mr...

...The present mission work of the Church among my people is at a great disadvantage by reason of numerous schools and colleges which the Protestant sects have placed among the Negroes, to say nothing of the independent denominations of Negroes with their own colleges and universities...

...The second is to use government to supplement failures of voluntary action...

...Whether measures that are proposed are necessary for "the general interest or that of any particular class," becomes then a question, of fact...

...The risk in Palestine today is immense, no less a risk than the loss of the faith, and this in the very cradle of our faith...

...Not only on Christmas night, but perhaps even more on the night of the Epiphany when the Franciscans (guardians for so many centuries of the sacred Grotto) have the right to celebrate Mass shortly after midnight...

...Alice E. Warren...

...It is no exaggeration to state that malaria, uncinariasis, and tuberculosis is their lot...

...Charles J. Byrnes asking for a fair trial for prohibition, and incidentally suggesting more cooperation by Catholics...

...A PLEA FROM PORTO RICO Ponce, Porto Rico...

...We have no Negro Catholic leaders of education...

...If attention could be called to the needs of these, their aims, hopes and achievements...

...Yet, Porto Rico is a Catholic country, and, in spite of its apparent prosperity, it is a poor country...

...it is: "Shall we convert the Negro race to the Catholic faith...

...These are the gifts the Divine Child loves, and it is because all Catholics, whoever we are, unite in spirit at His Feet that I venture to send these few words on the feast of the Epiphany across the sea to the Catholics of America...

...The opportunity which is before the American Catholic today for the conversion of the numerous Negroes in this country may pass, never to return...

...The Cardinal Gibbons Institute is another instance of the new spirit...

...Kneeling close to the altar of the manger where Mass is said, the worshippers realize that they are indeed sharers in the Christian traditions—successors to those wise travelers of 2,000 years ago, who knelt here offering their gold and frankincence and myrrh...

...What the Catholic Church did for the savage and barbarous white races of northern Europe more than a thousand years ago, I believe she can more than do today for the NegroAmerican...

...Fortunately, Mr...

...The present drift of the Negroes is largely determined by the American attitude on questions connected with race and color...

...But now conditions are changed...

...The children are of all ages from five to fifteen...

...Its wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, especially three American sugar corporations which control over 50 percent of the total sugar production of the island...

...Nearly all the Catholic papers are friendly to the Negro's contentions for equal legal rights and civil standing in this country, but very few of them have any special reason for paying any attention to the Negro as such in their line, and consequently the Catholic papers as a rule attract no attention among Negroes...

...The Holy Father not only gave a special blessing to the work in 1923, but last spring His Holiness gave his special blessing under his photograph "to the teachers and the dear children of the Catholic Women's League school of Bethlehem...

...Times change and the need today in Palestine is for Catholic lay work to counteract the large amount of nonCatholic lay work set on foot there by English and by American non-Catholic missionary efforts...

...Yet this is the place chosen for a great ^forward movement" by American women Methodists...

...The question is not: "Shall we draw the color line...

...Once these people had every confidence in the white man, but that is rapidly dissipating and the tendency to form and to sustain purely Negro organizations has its crystalization around the Church, and the Catholic Church is coming to be regarded as only one more of the "white church organizations" whose greatest object is to keep Negroes out of their pews...

...With the fathers of the Society of the Divine Word, Josephites, and other religious bodies now struggling to maintain Catholic prestige in the conversion of races and nations, efforts are being made to establish schools and colleges where the Negro may obtain the benefit of Catholic training in the higher branches of learning...

...This education the Arabs are determined to have, and so it is necessary for Catholics to supply the need...

...Woodlock's doubt is not wellfounded...

...We stand in much danger of losing the few Negro Catholics we now have...

...The need for a Negro priesthood and sisterhood becomes increasingly apparent...

...He asks whether the government has the right to supplement failures of voluntary action when more than the minimum of justice is imposed...

...The weaving and embroidery rooms attached to our school are an important feature of the work...

...Next summer we hope to take the children to see more of the holy places which many of them have never seen...

...CATHOLICS AND PROHIBITION New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—I wish to express, through the medium of your paper, my appreciation of the letter written by Mr...

...He questions, for example, whether the government can order the transfer of property rights or "economic power," even when necessary for the public good, if the minimum required by strict justice does not demand it...

...The need for it has become even more urgent this year, owing to the large girls' school recently acquired by American Methodists—so unless our school can be not only maintained but developed, there will ensue grave danger to the faith of Catholic girls in the little hill city so dear to every Catholic heart...

...There are no traditions among them coming down from the religious controversies of the sixteenth century, and the only reason why these simple folk have not turned their eyes toward Mother Church is that those who represent her have appeared not to care anything about them...

...that the government can require more than the minimum of justice—can require, for example, the transfer by sale of property rights...

...This most recent development of our work arose from the need for Catholic English-speaking education, a need of paramount importance in Palestine...

...TO the Editor:—In the editorial section of your periodical for December 30, 1925, under the heading, Week By Week, you refer to "a nation-wide drive for $2,000,000, to be expended in caring for Filipino children of mixed blood...

...and no way in which to minimize, explain, or deny to our own race the truth or falsity of such statements...

...Its purpose is an economic system that will harmonize with the dignity of human personality and aid in the exercise of human rights...

...Fortunately, it is a part of Catholic social teaching...

...What if we come from the West rather than from the East...

...Emotionalism has reached its zenith among those more cultivated, and the scholars among us are slowly drifting into infidelity and agnosticism...

...I feel that your readers may be glad to know something about this effort of ours to provide Catholic education (Arabic and English) for the Arab girls of Bethlehem...

...Woodlock in reply questions this secondary method...

...Last summer they made an excursion to Ain Karem, the birthplace of Saint John the Baptist...

...As the girls marry at fourteen or at latest at fifteen, it is all important to educate them while very young...

...In neither case does the minimum required by strict justice demand such action...

...The Negroes now have several widely read high-class papers and magazines, among them, The Crisis, edited by W. E. January 27, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 327 Burkhardt Du Bois, a graduate of Harvard and of the University of Berlin—a master of invective and a bitter writer...

...Much inclined to outward acts of worship and toward things spiritual, the numerous sects and religious organizations flourishing among us demonstrate the fact that we are not an agnostic people...

...Think of children eight miles from Jerusalem who have never seen the Holy Sepulchre...

...F. L. PORRATA DORIA...

...As a Negro, and a convert to Catholicism, I am deeply interested in seeing something done for the salvation of my people...

...Kathleen Balfe...

...As a supplementary force, a national Negro periodical, published under Catholic auspices, with a competent staff of Negro writers, would be a step in advance...

...Religious they are, it is true, but the religion of the masses of the Negroes as they know it, has little relation to personal conduct...

...Irish land laws under certain conditions force landlords in Ireland to sell land to their tenants...

...How can any country really develop unless its women are sufficiently educated to exert the influence which Catholic wives and mothers must wield if the Catholic faith is to hold its own in the future...

...TO the Editor:—There is a subject which is of the greatest importance, I believe, and which I hope to see you take up in your paper—the Negro Catholic missions in the United States...

...The education is given in Arabic as well as English, since the underlying motive of the work is to make good Palestinian wives and mothers for the future...

...It is a private function and they only ask a few, but those few are indeed privileged...

...God Himself would receive no consideration from them unless He drew the "colorline...

...their struggles, the many disadvantages under which they work, and the prime necessity of more and greater interest on the part of clergy and laity, it would arouse and enlighten many Catholics to the dire need of more attention to this work of the Church...

...Pope Leo in his encyclical on the condition of labor lays down the following principle—"Whenever the general interest, or that of any particular class suffers, or is threatened with evils which can in no other way be met, the public authority must step in to meet them...

...My people are a religious race, very naturally...

...The twelve or fifteen millions of Negroes here are not hostile to the Catholic Church...

...The field is large and the time is ripe for a great effort...

...Du Bois in an issue not long ago, openly charged the Catholic Church as the worst offender of all the Christian denominations on the "color" question...

...Gustave B. Aldrich...

...besides, the heavy European immigration took about all the energy of the Church to care for, so there was little time to think of the Negro...

...Surely, American Catholics will like to rally to the support of Catholic English-speaking work there...

...we have no Negro priesthood...

...Therefore, members of the Catholic Women's League, when asked by the patriarch of Jerusalem, Monsignor Barlassina, as far back as 1920 to provide educated English-speaking women for Palestine, determined to do what they could, and the Bethlehem Catholic school for English and weaving is the result...

...Under that principle comes the right and duty of the government to use its power, when the facts warrant it, to supplement voluntary methods of attaining diffusion of ownership in a cooperative system...

...The rapid material advance of the Negroes in this country makes them an important factor in the affairs of the American people...

...Governor Smith of New York proposes that the state give limited dividend corporations regulated power under certain conditions to condemn property for the construction of moderately priced houses...

...Since the war, there is an absolute craving among the Arabs for education, and more particularly for the English language and for education on western lines...