Communications
COMMUNICATIONS CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:—Many of us should feel greatly indebted to Reverend Edgar R. Smothers, S.J., for continuing (not "renewing," if I...
...Paul Fuller, I am doubly sorry, for he was a man whom I respected and admired without limit or qualification...
...The breakdown of the Conference after Mr...
...William Franklin Sands...
...Better music, more pleasing architecture, more intelligent sermons: surely this is a program on which both the clergy and laity can unite, without either the former becoming hypersensitive or the latter appearing hypercritical...
...Do we so stand out...
...M. Bois finds "more of politics than of religion," in the malevolent governmental programs of lo, these many years, to de-Christianize a Christian country...
...Even the desperate "Huns" did not fall low enough to send their priests to the trenches...
...Frenchmen," said he, "are first, nationalists...
...I can see no valid reason for the continued existence of an ignorant and turbulent Catholic American...
...It is necessary to go back almost to Aesop to find "quarrels," "difficulties," and "discussions," of this character presented with equal finesse...
...to harmonize certain differences of opinion which are not fundamental...
...But though it is long since I have read the fable, I do not seem to remember that the wolf's attorney needed anything like 528 words of denunciation to offset fourteen words of protest on behalf of the lamb...
...Whether there be or not, it will not readily be accorded to M. Bois...
...It is perhaps a more general use than I had thought possible...
...All the activities indicated by Father Smothers are admirable and not nearly well enough known by the "general...
...Fuller...
...to clarify a good deal of hazy thinking about it...
...These discussions," he tells us, "form part of our civilization...
...What Reverend Edward Hawks offers is simply that a member of the laity who desires music less irritating to the ear or glass less tawdry is either an ex-ritualist or a jaded neurasthenic...
...There is here, to my way of thinking, an opportunity to stimulate thought on one of the most important subjects to which our thought can turn, among those of us who are not thinking about it at all...
...Not so with M. Bois...
...He did not think that any of the revolutionary leaders should be recognized, and the result of his report was the calling of the A.B.C...
...to define issues that are basic...
...Fuller's judgment as to the relative merits of the various revolutionary leaders in Mexico in 1913 was to point out that Villa was the least evil of the lot, as Mr...
...I ascribe it solely to a fine sense of delicacy on the part of the laity, an overdeveloped sense perhaps, yet, nevertheless, a tribute to the high regard in which the clergy is held by the laity...
...My letter had the further object of deploring the use of a great name to crush a legitimate and useful discussion in the pages of The Commonweal...
...Frank H. Spearman...
...To this plan General Villa agreed, although Carranza refused...
...The question, however, goes deeper than this, I believe...
...Thomas F. Woodlock...
...TO the Editor:—Lo...
...Norwalk, Conn...
...Or, are we (in our numbers) beginning to be disliked and distrusted, and that—not, as I think, wholly or even principally on religious grounds...
...When Reverend Peter Moran, C.S.P., recently adverted to certain phases of clerical inoperativeness, I thought he had initiated a discussion which would be second in amiability only to the late (and lamented) outpouring on what is and what is not right about Catholic education...
...A French missionary priest recently gave me nearly as good an explanation of the French situation as this apology by M. Bois for his long-suffering French government...
...That these diseases exist is manifest...
...636 THE COMMONWEAL April 14, 1926 FRENCH CATHOLICISM: A NEW ERA Hollywood, Calif...
...COMMUNICATIONS CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:—Many of us should feel greatly indebted to Reverend Edgar R. Smothers, S.J., for continuing (not "renewing," if I may suggest the substitution of a word) discussion of Catholic education in America...
...Fuller's report are not well known...
...D. T. Powell...
...Here, I thought, is an opportunity for all the laymen to air their just and unjust grievances against mediocre music, ugly interior decoration, and clerical logorrhea...
...This may account for his penetrating terseness...
...I do, indeed, expect "heavier thunderclaps" than Father Smothers's welcome and most courteous communication—I have had some, already, in private replies to my open letters, in one of which I was taken to task at great length and with greater severity for daring to criticize "Ecclesia docens...
...The sporadic resistance of French Catholics to the efforts to drive God out of France, has unhappily resulted, according to M. Bois, in "quarrels," "difficulties," and "discussions...
...Either this is a legitimate subject of discussion by laymen, or the adequacy of the education of our laymen heretofore is seriously challenged by the gentlemen to whom I refer...
...TO the Editor:—It has been said that the only men without prejudice are those in insane asylums...
...Within a compass of 2,501 words, the distinguished French writer uses 528 words in part to denounce, and in part to reproach, French-Catholic elements and French Catholics...
...To single out one only, I should like to testify, as one having experience in these matters, that the Georgetown Foreign Service School is, under the guidance of its brilliant young founder, the best of its kind in this country, and though it is not a Catholic school, it is most properly an activity for a Catholic college to undertake...
...May we take that as a first step in discussion...
...But the word "prejudice" is held in disfavor...
...I have also asked the opinion of several others who have read the letter and they agree with me that it could be and will be interpreted as meaning that Mr...
...Combes, in all the circumstances, might well retort: "Why pick on me...
...I am thinking of Catholic schools and colleges not only as asylums for the protection of youth from contamination (which, of course, they should be) not only as centres of culture and scholarship, sufficiently diversified to meet the needs of all elements of the Catholic community...
...It was with that intention that my letter was written, not as a professional educator (which I am not) nor as an irresponsible critic, but as one who thinks he sees something of the problems which have beset our teachers in the past, sympathizes deeply with the manner in which they have been met, but believes very firmly that we stand in these matters at the beginning of a new era: that these problems, in the main, have been met to the extent that compelling circumstances permitted, and that the question is of the future...
...Fuller's resignation as United States representative at the Conference resulted in the recognition of Carranza, with the consequent disasters with which you are familiar...
...a disappointed reader...
...Is there any such thing...
...Fuller saw them...
...I trust they will never cease...
...Obviously, it is not concerned with ritual...
...But his paper is so moderately, so appealingly phrased, that it assumes, even if he did not intend it, the virtue of impartiality...
...Fuller, in his report to President Wilson, advised recognition of Villa or at least some kind of accord with him...
...and it is evident, in spite of what you say, that the contents of Mr...
...but legislation of this sort calls for a special aptitude for baseness...
...I have read your letter to the editor of The Commonweal, published in its issue of March 31, entitled Mexico: The Law of the Land...
...Conference to agree upon some Mexican of the more conservative type who had the confidence of all parties...
...but primarily as a recognizable spiritual force and refining influence...
...Such "discussions," necessarily include the most recent infamy of the attempt to de-Christianize the Alsatian schools...
...and finally, to swing an opinion enlightened by fair discussion behind those upon whom the physical burden of education falls...
...ON BEHALF OF MR...
...If we say "sympathy," we have—whether it follows judgment, or precedes it—a less objectionable expression and one that serves an equal purpose...
...But the missionary priest's name, despite his Lyons congregation, happened to be Sullivan...
...Any neuro-psychiatrist will inform Father Hawks that an appreciation of beauty is not a part of the symptomatology of neurasthenia...
...A rather careful reading is sometimes necessary to determine behind which side a writer's sympathy is concealed...
...that laymen frequently discuss them among themselves is true...
...afterward, Catholics...
...So it happens that the one answer to Father Moran is by a member of the right wing of the clerical section, while the laymen remain reticent, or reverent...
...The conspicuous infamy of sending priests and religious, armed, to the trenches, he happily phrases under: "During and after the war, priests were employed in the service of France and enjoyed the confidence of the officials...
...If my letter has given offense to any friend of Mr...
...PAUL FULLER Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:—I have received from a friend the following letter: "You are the last person, I am sure, who would wish, wittingly, to do an injustice to the memory of Mr...
...RETICENCE OR REVERENCE...
...Your article by M. Jules Bois on French Catholicism: A New Era (issue of March 17) suggests such a reflection...
...My whole purpose in referring to what I had supposed to be Mr...
...Undoubtedly," he tells us with a candor that emphasizes the judicial nature of his reflections, "there has been wrong on both sides...
...so much gain, therefore, that they are now emphasized...
...and restricts himself to fourteen words indignantly to refer to the Combes regime as one "of painful memory...
...This is only six words against 2,501...
...What, then, I ask, can be the reason for the woeful lack of correspondence...
...Nothing could be further from the fact...
...I have not, heretofore, translated those Latin words with just the meaning given to them by my correspondent, but their use in that sense is illuminating, and I am duly grateful...
...I fear that my letter to The Commonweal, of March 31, may have given an impression to others similar to that which it made upon my correspondent...
Vol. 3 • April 1926 • No. 23
