The Pilgrim's Lifted Eyebrows

...not all the blood of all the Howards...

...Assuredly, no...

...He had found documentary evidence, he said, of most friendly relations, not only between the Jesuits and the Indians, but also between the missionaries and the white traders, one of whom, probably Miles Standish, was mentioned as having worshipped with the Indians at their little chapel...

...but would anyone dare assert that they are altogether absent from any large group or section of our citizenry...

...that were but to aggravate the first cause, which is certainly in greater part responsible for the deplorable situation...

...we may rest content in the confidence that truth will prevail, and that doctrines which have stood the test of twenty centuries of positive challenge will not lightly yield to the negative attack of contemporary indifference and disbelief...

...What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards...

...his life, I'm sure, was in the right...

...It has amused me since then to picture myself on a platform addressing a similar audience in Boston, and remarking in tones of conscious virtue—"Although I am a Catholic to my heels, I like to think of the good work done here and there by that early apostle to the Indians, John Eliot, and I'm proud of my Catholic forebears for not burning him at the stake...

...To mention distinguished individual Catholics to disprove the charge would be absurdly easy, and, moreover, beside the point...

...For it is precisely that group prejudice against which I would fain protest...

...In a single recent issue of one journal I counted twenty-seven "help wanted" advertisements that listed "Protestant" among the qualifications desired, while twice as many seekers of situations so declared themselves in manifest confidence that they were thereby adding to their claims upon the consideration of employers...

...We have "hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions" even as they, laughing when they tickle us, bleeding when we are pricked...

...I live for several months in the year in an old New England village, where many of the inhabitants trace their descent directly from the first settlers...

...I hope not...

...But let us confine ourselves to the subject of human relations...

...Now, looking squarely at the cultural development of these masses, we cannot regard such a concession as the highest form of compliment, and I, for one, find myself waxing warm under the repeated insinuation until, to paraphrase Lowell, I check myself with the reflection—"What possible claim have my Protestant friends to rob me of my composure ?" In general, the ironic policy of forestalling complications by an open confession of faith seems the obviously Christian and becoming line of conduct, but I must confess to a slightly malicious satisfaction when circumstances force me to spring a trap that one of these complacent persons unwittingly sets for himself...

...Shall we stand aloof, and avoid that mutual intercourse which is the only sure basis of right feeling...

...I would remind my Protestant brethren that if they are Americans, so are we...

...When I told him we were still going strong, he tried to cover his astonishment by saying he would have recognized the type in Baltimore, but here in Boston he had never met any like me...

...she is Protestant and white...

...Am I oversensitive and touchy on this point...

...Upon inquiring of one of my neighbors recently whether she had a scrubwoman she could recommend, I received the unhesitating reply—"Yes, I'm sure you would like Martha...

...In fact, this declaration of faith was by many of the advertisers their only specific ground of appeal, all technical qualifications, as in the case of my neighbor's scrubwoman, being overlooked or omitted...

...And I believe the second named cause of the bias against us will automatically disappear exactly in proportion as we individually exhibit to our fellow citizens the proper fruits of Catholic teaching in justice and fair dealing, in respect for authority, in kindness and courtesy and charity, and in that high veneration of womanhood—perhaps the most valuable contribution we can make to the civilization of the times—which made Dr...

...It is easy to see that religious affiliations may on several grounds be properly considered in domestic relations, and I have Catholic friends who prefer Protestant servants because their church-going does not conflict with that of the family...

...And I would have each one so order his conduct that the most prejudiced Protestant would concede to him at least the poet's epitaph: "His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might Be wrong...

...if we are descendants of immigrants, so are they...

...When, however, a self-constituted model of les bienseances errs so palpably as not to consider the possible effect of such remarks, may one not be excused for letting him take the consequences...

...I know so well that a good Catholic is bound to command respect that when I meet a strong prejudice against us, I can trace it to but one of two causes: Either the prejudiced person has had no opportunity for Catholic contacts, or, more's the pity, he has known some unworthy sons of the Church...

...Such trifling indiscretions might well be overlooked were it not for the groundless assumption of inherent superiority which they denote...

...Not pleasant attributes these, whether met with in Catholic or Protestant, in Scientist, Jew or agnostic...

...unless it be that I am concerned at the thought that the prepossession may be in any degree justified...

...Thus, when I was asked to recommend a secretary to a business acquaintance, and my mention of a very reliable girl, blessed—or handicapped—with a good old Irish name brought instantly the suspicious query —"Is she a Catholic...

...what could I, in fairness, answer but—"No, she is not, but I am...

...these I would repudiate, be their station high or low...

...Alas...

...But why does it enter into the situation of "a young man who wishes an opening in the radio department of a large concern" ; or of "a graduate of Dartmouth who seeks an opportunity with a firm of accountants...

...And, furthermore, since there are now some twenty millions of us, and we are notoriously prolific, it is no longer safe to assume that they are not going to meet us, looking and acting very much like other people, in every stratum of society...

...To my coreligionists I would plead for the utter removal of those seeds of suspicion sown by socalled Catholics, whose actions belie their faith, and who injure their kind far more than our non-Catholic neighbors have either the wish or the power to do...

...The items ranged through all the occupations from an "accommodating cook" (heaven bless her...

...to which I could only reply that he ought to become more familiar with us...

...and if they have prospered in this land of opportunity, we seek merely a fair field and no favor in a similar endeavor...

...Our religious differences do not properly come within the scope of these reflections...

...and what can be the possible purpose in adding to an advertisement for a salesman in the wholesale bakery trade the requirement, "Protestant only...

...It is the bit of truth in every slander, the hint of likeness in every caricature, that makes us smart...

...In Boston we are, I believe, a numerical majority, and since we have 'become so numerous, is it not a little ridiculous to assume that we are not "dreadfully like" any other large group in democratic America, with approximately the same percentage of cultivated and uncultivated...

...Here, if anywhere, one might look for the flowering of that "Protestant white America" about which we have heard so much of late...

...Johnson exclaim: "I wonder that women are not all Papists...

...The same apparently irrelevant factor runs through the advertising columns of our local papers...

...Yet even here there are unbecoming airs of patronage on the part of those more doughty defenders of the old-time strongholds of Protestantism as they grant us somewhat tardy credit for having preserved through the ages the very Bible on which they make their protesting stand...

...Yet in public and in private we are continually reminded of our homogeneous inferiority, and are expected, a certain few of us, to feel flattered by an occasional implication that we are conspicuous exceptions rising above our coreligionists to the general level of the masses around us...

...On another occasion I'm afraid I rather enjoyed the discomposure of a professional associate, who, learning (with some surprise) that I was of Irish ancestry, asked with 634 THE COMMONWEAL April 14, 1926 calm assurance how long it was since my family had been Catholic...

...When we were celebrating the Pilgrim tercentenary a few years ago, an erudite local historian alluded, in the course of his address, to the Catholic mission that flourished on the banks of the Kennebec near the trading post of the Plymouth colonists...

...What, then, is the remedy...

...Nevertheless, it was here that one of my elderly neighbors, in lamenting the rudeness of present-day behavior, remarked with pride: "My mother brought me up to be po-lite even to the Irish...

...In point of fact, however, the general tone of manners and morals is depressingly low, particularly among the representatives of the old stock...

...at one end of the alphabet, to a "young lady in real estate office" at the other, and included, not only American, Canadian, Scotch, Irish, Nova Scotian, and Scandinavian Protestants, but "educated Protestants," "refined Protestants," and "very capable Protestants...

...On the contrary, I believe we Catholics should do everything in our power to cultivate better relations socially, professionally, in business and in industry, with uour separated brethren," not, indeed, aggressively or contentiously, but without apology or abasement, merely taking our rightful share of activity in the place that belongs to us in the body politic...

...Certainly, these food products, as well as the radio supplies and the services of the firm of accountants, would be freely exchanged for the money of Catholics, and it seems significant that no mention of religion occurs in the open advertising pages, but only in the safe anonymity of the classified columns...

...In a fine burst of magnanimity he concluded his story by declaring—"Although I am a Protestant to my toes, I like to think that this band of Catholic missionaries was unmolested by our colonial ancestors, and that they could live together in good will...

...For some reason or other, we do not rank as individuals, but are regarded by our Protestant fellow citizens as a group apart, and, being thus classified, are tagged alike with class labels of ignorance, cupidity, and ill breeding...

...of superior, average, and sub-normal intelligence...