Philadelphia's Catholic Pageant
Bregy, Katherine
October 6, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 519 PHILADELPHIA'S CATHOLIC...
...they seemed to remain oblivious of the But though uncolorful, the Sixth Congress was an ocdoughty little mortals scurrying about their feet...
...officers of the French and American armies...
...But it is quite as notable that they are never too, are mingled in a little scene in a Philadelphia inn overstressed...
...Then comes the final scene in old contact with them during this year 1926...
...It was an eminently represented on the program with the single exception sedate and respectable assembly, disinclined to flaunt of China...
...Where the so-called Fifth Internaas well...
...The latter carefully prepared paper in the bottom of his trunk...
...In this crisis, he splendid a gesture in the cause of liberty Carroll's sig- asks of his loyal clergy an "unprecedented" favor-the nature must have been...
...The exception, probably unavoidable in...
...October 6, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 519 PHILADELPHIA'S CATHOLIC PAGEANT By KATHERINE BREGY B EFORE the present Sesquicentennial celebration The next scene shows the throne room at Vertook form, there were serious doubts whether sailles on March 20, 1778, when-in a scene recalling an international or quasi-international exposi- the familiar picture in our grandmothers' parlorstion were really the best way to signalize the event- Benjamin Franklin and the other American legates are and in spite of all that has, under great difficulties, been presented after ratifying the important Treaty of Comaccomplished, it cannot be said that those doubts have merce and Alliance between France and the United ever been entirely brushed away...
...since it risked his enormous free gift of that $6,ooo,ooo promised to the colonies...
...Only one another, agog with excitement, that there were philosopher fulfilled traditional expectations by cross400 philosophers upon the campus' Or did ing the Atlantic to address the congress and then disthey, on the contrary, fail to recognize them, from covering, when he rose to speak, that he had left his their appearance, as philosophers at all...
...We believe that our country's heroes ing to the decisive battlefields of the South...
...but chosen for this pageant-drama, although a more ex- she was ready to give more...
...if there was furtive nod- Otherwise, philosophers and papers appeared upon ding or winking among the elms, it was quite imper- the dot with almost disheartening regularity...
...Photo- the pageant closes...
...the churchmen, already sorely taxed...
...there was almost no secular pub- lose its influence over the people, and if it is found unlicity, and the patronage was bound to suffer from able to procure the aids that are wanted . . . the whole the effects of late-summer absences...
...Modern thinkers have successful attempt since the war to bring together perhaps taken to heart Seneca's wise remark that philosophers from the leading nations of the world philosophers have such strange ideas that it is super- and to reknit the broken strands of international philofluous for them to affect strange manners and attire sophic thinking...
...ceptible...
...And next morn- moving directness in this colorful scene-as in the ing the Philadelphia Ledger announced the produc- next, where our harassed young Washington pleads tion of a pageant which was "more than a pageant," his own cause before the French Minister in Philatogether with the half-awed eulogy of the mayor of delphia...
...contributive and constructive work in raising the dry But truisms are troublesome, disconcerting things- bones of these Revolutionary episodes to life again...
...Standing themselves upon pressive one might well be found for future perform- the perilous brink of that Revolution in which their ances-is laid in a Maryland blacksmith's shop during own lives are to pay the price of their fathers' politithe August of 1776...
...pathos in the episode of the ragged, half- lan, Fitzimmons and "Mad Anthony" Wayne...
...services to the cause of American independence are But to return to the pageant-comedy and pathos, stressed...
...and beRecords of this meeting, together with a receipt for fore the little, tapered altar, Pere Seraphin Bandol, this "don gratuit" (a loan it was never understood to Franciscan chaplain to the French embassy, is preachbe, and it seems to have been but the first instalment ing his historic sermon...
...Burns achieves tellMetropolitan Opera-House in Philadelphia on Sep- ing effect: "I am grown old...
...To this meetof Carrollton, just returned from the Continental Con- ing, presided over by Cardinal Dominique de la Rochegress, enters and tells of the signing of that Declara- foucauld, and attended by all the major clergy of tion of Independence-baptismal certificate of, the France, Louis sends his royal commissioner to explain United States of America-which is to give a new the depletion of the French treasury, his aversion to nation, most composite of all nations, to the waiting increasing the people's taxes, and the vital need of world...
...Liberty-loving France had given much: the the city...
...was more probably the case...
...but urged by de520 THE COMMONWEAL October 6, 1926 votion to the king, by their desire to spare any further Saint Mary's Church, Philadelphia, where on Noburden to the people of France, and by their sympathy vember 4, 1781, a Mass of thanksgiving has been with the American cause, they unanimously vote to said in the presence of members of the Congress and raise what must at that time have been a colossal sum...
...PHILOSOPHY UNDER THE ELMS By ERNEST SUTHERLAND BATES D ID the Harvard elms recently whisper to one Socratic noses or Schopenhauerian locks...
...At any rate, a casual observer of the Sixth tional Congress of 1924 in Naples had proved to be International Congress of Philosophy would have been only a local affair, the sixth was attended by seventy unable to distinguish it from any other contemporary foreign delegates, and every important nation was gathering of noted educators...
...words of that memorable pastoral of the Third PlenHe has come, bringing additional funds, and some four ary Council of Baltimore, dated December 7, 1784: thousand troops to add to the pitiful 7,000 which "Back of the events that led to the formation of the are all Washington can claim from the Chesapeake to republic, the Church sees the providence of God leadCanada-and together the two generals are proceed- ing to that issue...
...The piercing need of that heroic ence rose with a feeling that the Catholic great-great- little army which, after its first spectacular victories, grandchildren of the Revolution had achieved a com- was to suffer for five years every martyrdom of hunmemoration not unworthy of the momentous Declara- ger, cold, disease and disheartenment, is revealed with tion in whose honor it was prepared...
...I feel myself much entember 13 and 14, as the contribution of the American feebled by my late long illness, and it is probable I Catholic Historical Society to this Sesquicentennial...
...casion of very considerable importance...
...That were the instruments of the God of nations in estabFrench assistance during those fateful years saved the lishing this home of freedom...
...Charles Carroll Grands Augustins in Paris, May, 1780...
...But starved soldiers constantly deserting from the discour- the fundamental fact is brought out that to Catholics aged little army, and as constantly returning to its -incorrigible and, in the main, practical idealists that desperate hope...
...It was impossible, from the necessities during the September of 178 : comedy in the tepid of chronology or concentration, to include even such brew prepared for his Tory visitors by the loyal inn- familiar and famous figures as Lafayette, Barry, Moykeeper...
...But there can be no States...
...stat copies of them have recently been acquired by the It is notable that throughout these scenes Catholic Catholic Historical Society...
...In the welcome of Rochambeau to High Street, Philadelphia...
...One knows now how weighty a thing and how funds to pursue the war in America...
...American cause precisely as the Americans saved the The Catholic Historical Society has done a rarely Allied cause in I9I8, has become but a truism now...
...that, if the English are suffer'd once to gether with poignant sense of drama and reverent re- recover that country, such an opportunity of effectual gard for the spirit of historic truth by the Reverend separation as the present may not occur again in the John F. Burns, O.S.A., of Villanova College, the audi- course of ages...
...services of Lafayette and the earlier, now so celebrated The first scene of Constancy-for that was the name "French loan" were already matters of history...
...fortune and the future of his beloved state for the There is, naturally enough, grave consultation among sacred but shadowy ideal of freedom...
...There is a surging Te Deum of large moneys later donated by the French clergy) -and in a tableau dominated by the American flag, are now in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris...
...After receiving the approval of Cardinal Dougherty, I therefore take this occasion to express my opinion the cast of nearly thirteen hundred men, women and to Your Excellency, that the present conjuncture is critichildren was quietly but capably rehearsed through cal ; that there is some danger lest the Congress should the summer months...
...Then the climax of the whole is we are !-the struggle and its outcome must be judged reached in a crowded scene of half-delirious joy, the by supernatural as well as natural canons...
...shall not long have any more concern in these affairs...
...It was the first The elms may be pardoned...
...Yet, when the system of the new government in America may therecurtain closed on those eight episodes brought to- by be shaken...
...The background of the action cal sins, we see Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette is built up by conversation between the native work- promising further help in men and money to the strugmen, still fired by the undeniable New England slogan gling young United States...
...Here, by placing upon Franklin's own lips the two opinions about the timeliness or the inspirational words of his later impassioned letter to the French value of the Revolutionary pageant presented at the Foreign Minister, Vergennes, Dr...
...It like old photographs or the Ten Commandments- is ten thousand pities that the whole huge bulk of and sometimes so very convenient to forget American citizens, Catholic and non-Catholic, may not The surrender of Yorktown is reported in a brief, have their faith and patriotism stimulated by visual moonlit tableau...
...concerning "taxation without representation," and a One of the most interesting scenes of the whole mysterious aged traveler (apparently symbolizing the pageant-because representing a fact of real historic Catholic Church) who defends the revolt of the colon- importance little known even to Catholics who do not ies on the more philosophical ground that they have happen to be Franco-American specialists-is the now grown into manhood and may justly throw off the Assembly of the French clergy at the convent of the shackles only necessary for the child...
Vol. 4 • October 1926 • No. 22
