Communications
190 THE COMMONWEAL December 23, 1925 COMMUNICATIONS THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL MOVEMENT Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:—Mr. Woodlock, in reply to my letter printed in your columns November 18,...
...the Church sought the abolition of slavery itself precisely because it was such a dangerous thing and because even under the best of conditions, it was so little conformable with human dignity...
...An archbishop celebrant of the Mass...
...One gets the impression that most of our churches arose from crates of "knock-down frames...
...This contention was never accepted by CathoKc sociologists and today it is no longer plausible, for profiteering combinations have ousted competition from the greater part of the economic field...
...Which are the Epiphany Collect of the Roman liturgy and the prayer, Deus, Qui Humanae Substantiae Dignitatem Mirabiliter Condidisti of the Roman Canon -—prose or poetry...
...How meaningless have some rubrics become in the presence of amputated vestments...
...Until Robert Brunne of Manning, about 1325, all English poetry was blank verse—though often having alliteration and mid-verse pause to give the necessary rhythm...
...the bishops' program advocates copartnership and cooperative production ; the pastoral letter urges the restoration of the principle of widespread diffusion of property ownership in the things a person works with...
...Rene Bazin in 1921 published Pere Foucauld, Explorateur de Maroc, Ermite au Sahara...
...They have a sameness that suggests Sears-Roebuck catalogues...
...How well Archbishop Dowling's masterly sermon linked the past with the present...
...We must offer the people something concrete and detailed if we are to get them to listen to us...
...Adelrick Benziger...
...Henry Somerville...
...But let that pass...
...The encyclical says—"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...
...Was ever such a restoration needed...
...Lack of rhyme would disqualify Beowulf, Seafarer, Hymn of Creation, Christ, Piers Plowman, King Henry the Fifth, Paradise Lost, Evangeline, Idylls of the King, as perfect poetry...
...In it (Robert Manning's rhyming chronicle) we note the appearance of rime, a new thing in English poetry, borrowed from the French...
...The Architectural League paid him a graceful tribute for his splendid chapel at Trinity College...
...labor unions are advocated by the bishops' program, the pastoral letter of the American hierarchy and Pope Leo's encyclical...
...a cardinal of the Church upon a throne of crimson...
...TOMBS IN THE SAHARA Denver, Colo...
...Woodlock, in reply to my letter printed in your columns November 18, asks the rather pointed question—Which items in the economic program are debatable on grounds of strict justice, and which are not...
...The same task that Mr...
...Maginnis stands...
...It does not seem to me that it is right to call all blank verse hybrid—that is, a cross between prose and poetry, but neither prose nor poetry...
...Yet the Church was not content with preserving only the essential and inalienable rights of slaves...
...That is indeed an exceedingly interesting question, but fortunately, it is not at all the main question in the circumstances, nor is it one necessary to decide...
...Long's Outline of English Literature, tells us...
...Woodlock said in his letter that the competitive principle in economics "has in its calculations completely neglected human personality" and "under its operations a rather large proportion of human society has been driven to living conditions which are incompatible with the dignity* of human personality," Should not one then search not only for strict justice and the minima thereof, but for a social system that will harmonize with the dignity of human personality and be less dangerous to human rights...
...It is not by any single tower that Mr...
...Let the nuns wear all the lace and put the linen on the priests...
...Alas, when the architect departs, the altar society enters...
...He deserves a full measure of credit, along with the late John T. Comes, whose genius he has recently extolled in the Architectural Record...
...His tentative statement of a Catholic economic program is not only interesting but very instructive and suggestive...
...The fortunate ones who witnessed the consecration of Saint Mary's in Oswego last September, will long recall the magnificence of that function...
...Yet this is not a question of strict justice with minima in its performance...
...Paris: Librairie Plon...
...intervention of the law to protect persons in immediately important matters is advocated by the bishops' program and the encyclical, both of which go into details...
...He has his place among the foremost architects of America...
...Better risk making mistakes and arousing keen controversy than stagnate in an easy chair of platitudes...
...the simplicity of linen albs contrasting with the cloth of gold...
...December 23, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 191 BELGIAN LACE AND BRUSSELS SPROUTS New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—Mr...
...The surpliced choir, the prelates in their purple in the chancel stalls...
...and in his Glossary of Christian Ornament are handsome plates in color that should be a revelation to the critics of ancient church apparel...
...by imported windows that might well have been deported before they crossed the threshold of the Customs House...
...they however do not agree on this...
...A picture such as Edwin Abbey could have put on canvas, like the Holy Grail...
...the organization of business men is a constituent part of Catholic social teaching and practice abroad...
...It would also disqualify the Latin psalter, the Gloria in Excelsis, and the Te Deum as perfect poetry...
...He rightly says that the desire to make as high a profit as possible without the check of ethical motives is pure paganism...
...The theorists of capitalism have contended that private profit seeking needed no regulation except that which was automatically imposed by free competition...
...They have brought about a Catholic reformation in church building...
...its rich windows in wondrous colors shedding lustre on the shrines and on the scene...
...The argument from necessity has long been answered by the argument from reason...
...Let us take slavery for comparison...
...Comes said "Diocesan Gothic" described our condition, if not our necessity...
...The past and present were there in a mystic marriage of ancient tradition united to modern needs...
...These bodies have used their credit and finance to extend cooperative ownership of industry and trade...
...Woodlock enunciates...
...Somehow I can't keep associating Belgian lace with Brussels sprouts...
...A CATHOLIC ECONOMIC PROGRAM London, England...
...From Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, Diocesan Gothic lifts its head everywhere...
...The modern trend in poetry—as in music and dancing— is away from the Germanic, rigid, mechanistic rhythm of artificiality and back to the rhythm of nature...
...Comes had he lived to see the climax of his work...
...These same unions did not urge private ownership of railroads, but instead the continuance of government ownership with the employees sharing in the management and in the rewards of efficiency...
...Pugin is authority that so-called "Gothic" vestments are in reality old Roman...
...The thesis on slavery in Cathrein's Ethics reads, in translation, as follows—"True slavery in any of its forms is little consonant with human dignity and is filled with many dangers...
...Are all these masterpieces hybrid poetry...
...I should rather say that it is a perfectly normal program for a Catholic to hold...
...what is more incongruous than to see the Alter Christus adorned with fret-work lace...
...Indeed, the general principle of state intervention as laid down in the encyclical is far distant from the one Mr...
...It is the rhyme and meter which spoil so much of Longfellow's verse...
...His soul was remembered in a Solemn Requiem the next day...
...There are tombs here, very ancient pagan tombs which antedate Islam...
...L. Maynard Gray...
...The bishops' program, and the pastoral letter (in general terms) and Pope Leo's encyclical, and the Catholic social movement in general are not hesitant about required changes in the law...
...Maginnis and others set themselves to do—the splendor of God's house in nave and chancel...
...The legend that Saint Martin cut his cloak in twain seems to have been the motive of our celloshaped chasubles...
...The ministers of the Mass in mediaeval vesture...
...Both must have rhythm and reason...
...Peter Moran...
...Practical remedies must be found for economic abuses...
...Morrow writes— "To a perfect poem I think all three characteristics (rhythm, rhyme and reason) are essential...
...One might call it reactionary— so reactionary as to bend backwards towards the guilds of the middle-ages...
...his Boston College tower is a testimony of his eminence...
...It would have been a mighty joy to Mr...
...consumers' cooperation is advocated by the bishops' program of social reconstruction...
...TO the Editor:—The Associated Press, Chicago, November 28, reported the discovery of ancient tombs at Tamanrasset in the Sahara, by the Prorok-Beloit Expedition...
...In this book he gives the interesting account received by him from Major Robert Herrison, medical officer 1909-1910 at For Motylinski near Tamanrasset, where Pere de Foucauld liver many years as a missionary and hermit— "Pere de Foucauld told me it would be interesting to know whether a race other than the Tuareg has inhabited this desert...
...There is a point in which Mr...
...and the entire is chaos and filigree...
...His sacristy adjoining the great cathedral at Saint Paul has the charm of a baptistry at Florence...
...Maginnis himself is no small Goth...
...the Catholic labor unions of Italy proposed a law through which the employees would share in the management of concerns, share in the profits, and use their share of the profits to buy out the capital stock...
...Woodlock seems to think that the economic program which I tentatively formulated as the one held by a number of Catholics is expressive "of the radical wing of Catholic thought upon these things...
...the bishops' program urges high taxes on incomes and excess profits...
...Whitman and Dalcroze and Grieg led us out of our man-made formalism and into the innately artistic beauty of the lyric, folk-dances, and folksong...
...RHYTHM AND REASON Garrison, N. Y. TO the Editor:—In The Commonweal of December 2, Mr...
...These are very probably the ancestors of the Tuaregs...
...They will see no harm in exhuming the bones...
...You will then be able to determine the race relationship between these and the present day Tuaregs...
...Moreover, it seems to me that there is really no essential difference between good poetry and good prose...
...Neither rhyme nor regular, mechanical meter is essential to perfect poetry...
...You might make excavations there...
...It was like an illuminated page from the past...
...an authoritative and favorable discussion of such a proposal was pursued in the Catholic press and in Catholic social congresses...
...Pope Leo says in his encyclical on the condition of labor that "the law should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible to become owners...
...an economic parliament or congress has long been in one form or another a part of, for example, the Catholic social movement in France...
...Some good churches have been marred by pedestaled plaster saints, "in extra rich decorations...
...Woodlock, to my mind, errs...
...yet in itself, it does not strictly contradict the natural law so long as the essential and inalienable rights of a man are not taken from him...
...I have come to the conclusion that we Catholics will have no positive influence on the course of social reform if we confine ourselves to the enunciation of general principles...
...I am sure it will receive considerable attention from Catholic social schedules in England...
...a change in the corporation law to permit small shareholders and employees to sit on boards of directors is a moderate proposal...
...Later—"Even in blank verse which sacrifices rhyme and is consequently a hybrid between prose and poetry...
...There before the eyes of all were the things he worked and fought for...
...He says that "laws and constitutions concern themselves with strict justice and, furthermore, with minima in its performance...
...A „ ^ R. A. McGowan...
...The question, instead, is— Are any of the items unjust, and if they are not unjust, do they appear necessary to establish a social system consonant with the moral value of man and the dignity of human labor...
...He is as much at home in Lombard Romanesque as in early Gothic...
...TO the Editor:—Permit me to express my best thanks to R. A. McGowan for his letter in The Commonweal of November 18...
...and the reason is that we can boast of competent architects who build better churches in our day...
...Farmers' cooperation is a commonplace of Catholic social teaching and practice here and abroad...
...Maginnis deserves our thanks for his generous praise of Mr...
...cooperative banks and insurance companies have been advocated and organized by Catholic social leaders in Europe...
...Ralph Adams Cram, as the revivalist of the Gothic...
...The Church does so, too, when she gives us as the ideal medium of social prayer the indescribably unearthly melodies of unharmonized, rhymeless, meterless plainsong...
...Point d'esprit" kills the point of the sermon...
Vol. 3 • December 1925 • No. 7
