Week by Week
July 7, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 229 the average...
...It is trekking across hot sands...
...It has spoken and been recognized, with jubi- prevented thus far the consummation of these wise lant charity, through the patter of advertised scepti- and holy desires upon the part of Dr...
...By comparison other aspects of the the Conference...
...Whatever one may think about the CathoMICHAEL WILLIAMS, Editor lic doctrine of the Eucharist, men who have faith in the spiritual reality of life must rejoice that this unAssistant Editors THOMAS WALSH HELEN WALKER faltering testimony is given to the existence of miracle HENRY LONGAN STUART GEORGE N. SHUSTER and mystery...
...I the basis of Schliemann's discoveries, the honest repointed this out to Bennett, who said, `That is a bad alism of the Iliad...
...From a Christian (always one supposes, in the opinion of the liberal point of view, it must front the charge of being a posiweeklies) had penetrated beneath the surface...
...James Cox Brady, whose interest cellent results...
...He therefore asks "the opponents themselves will wish the incumbent president every and the critics of the Conference to consider that, success in carrying on a work to which he has devoted whether they admire or condemn its activities, they so much of his time and energy...
...Many who feel that here too much is JOHN F. MCCORMICK, Business Manager believed, will feel also that they have believed too little...
...and These important personages, each with his own staff 230 THE COMMONWEAL July 7, 1926 of selected clergymen, should not leave our country opium regulation, the Chinese delegate, once fairly unimpressed by the good will and sympathies of their afloat upon the subject of foreign intervention in his friends here...
...sons and reflective discussion of spiritual forces which Paul to a western editor and since reprinted in various modify the contemporary world...
...waterway when Commander Byrd came back to his own people that dispenses from further adulatory com- I F the study of the classics is becoming something else ment...
...But there were some who saw the plight of this people and also its splendid ALTHOUGH no claim is made that the official de- possibilities...
...tracted from his communings with the ghosts of Camille Desmoulins and the wicked duc d'Orleans by FOR the thirty-fifth time, the Catholic Summer shops in which the printed garbage of Europe is dis- School of America will open to combine genuine inplayed for sale...
...The convicted, terranean history, buried the "city of the oasis" from in this instance, are not like the bedless tramp of yore view and the whole character of the now legendary who intrigued the constable into offering bed and memory is changed...
...he is gaining the form of inducement to civic excellence in the future...
...Is the time not session had to be suspended in something like disorder, ripe for some movement toward a Pan-American and upon a pretext of taking tea which deceived no Catholic Congress, under the auspices of the aposto- one...
...And how will it continue to exist proves, however, that some way must eventually be among the pagans, if all the elements that once confound for internationalizing the consciousness of stituted it among ourselves, are not to be found in it...
...It is to be hoped that the coming tellectual culture with kindly living in the beautiful of what is really an international exhibition of culture lake region of northern New York...
...Works on sociology do not greatly interest it, a cruder generation was content to call the "bouncer...
...porary use of the novel as a pulpit a brazen assumption at which the writers of the "novelle" who inCASES OF CONSCIENCE augurated the genre would have stood aghast...
...peoples on both continents...
...Faith denies nothing that science can demonEditorial Council T. LAWRASON RIGGS JAMES J. WALSH strate, but it believes more...
...Among these nobody remains more "parliamentary" treatment of the work being done...
...Naturally it is unsafe to assume board...
...and burrowers into the earth who have been making "When we were about an hour from the pole [it is past ages contemporary with ourselves...
...Following the policy which, if he has the combat against irreligion, indifference, and hostil- not inaugurated it, he has kept steadily in the foreity that the gathering years may wreak upon our front of the Church's contemporary action, the weaker brethren and upon the spiritualities we are supreme Pontiff has just created the first native Chicalled upon to defend and perpetuate...
...The main necessarily cursory are apt to be misleading, but the difficulty, concludes M. Baumann, is one with which Times survey reinforces an observation that any any writer worthy the name should not fear to grapple...
...It is not too will not only save one of the beauty spots of old Paris much to say that the school has become one of those from the demolition that occasionally menaces it, but institutions which, as the old wit said, fit a man for involve a little of that wholesome civic sanitation dear tactful companionship with himself...
...Archbishop Dowling makes it clear program are rather noticeably weak, though even the that the bishops of at least eighty-five dioceses con- most insistent literary critic would find something to stitute the administration-bishops who, in their an- ease his smart...
...But the sinner against law-that after a season or two it has been left for contemporary shrewdness to sugspent within walls so warmly recommended, the blower gest that a good one, bestowed upon him at the last of safes or the unruly signer of checks might return moment, may be all that is necessary to earn him a to his kind wearing a variety of glory cloud...
...Now, if ina cook' said: `We will go to the pole first and we dications are not wholly deceptive, the life-work of Dr...
...international character, closer what can only be termed spiritual irrigation...
...acterized by distinction have continued the essentials of collegiate education-contact with scholarly perTHE letter addressed by Archbishop Dowling of St...
...thoughtful person must have made, namely, that what It is "to give form . . . to secrets that pass in the might be called, without abuse of terminology, a static human heart, and of which God alone is the Witness...
...One verging the Commander himself reminiscing at a luncheon on middle age can still remember the happiness on given in honor of the party by the Aero Club of Lon- the face of a good Greek professor able to assert, on don] I noticed a leak in the starboard oil tank...
...We imagine fully that wealth is, above all, a means with which to that most of the criticism comes from people who re- be charitable...
...will discuss what to do next.' " Among the sayings, Paul Borchardt, one of the most diligent students of unanswerable for their pithiness and for a quality classical geography, will be crowned with a great and wiser than wisdom that have become proverbs among plausible theory, if not with a firmly established our people, it is to be hoped that "We will go to the archaeological discovery...
...On the basis of a vast acpole first" will never be lost...
...We may see in the contemscent upon a dirty pocket-handkerchief...
...Betancourt, and cisms and glittering pleasantries...
...formatory agencies crash and splinter-it fails to note To us here the distinction is particularly gratifying the perishable character of good resolutions when not because, as a friendly Calvert Associate, he has done vitalized by motives of firmer texture than altruism...
...foothills behind which rise the newly cloudless heights In this comedy of the anxious prisoners there is, how- of antique civilization, the haunts and the daily habits ever, a fairly pertinent illustration...
...the rest, and their inevitable clash with the aspirations It remains to be seen whether existing political con- of a nation growing conscious of nationality, and bent ditions make the practical development of these ideas on self-determination...
...Even this finale able fashion...
...Father or policy, touched upon two highly important pro- Philip Tchao, a Chinese secular priest who has been posals: one to underwrite an agreement between all acting as secretary to Monsignor Costantini, apostolic nations of the two American continents to resist ag- delegate in China, has been quite simply raised to its gression against any one of their number, and the head with the title and functions of the episcopate...
...other to attempt the gradual formation of "a League To those who still doubt from what quarter the asof American Nations...
...It refuses to be shut up CARLTON J. H. HAYES R. DANA SKINNER in the narrow confines which from time to time science BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE has set for it, and rightly, because the whole story of Subscription Rates Yearly: $10.00 Single Copies: $0.20 science has been the extending of those confines, the widening of its sphere, until, in recent years, it has broken beyond all bounds and finds itself wandering in WEEK BY WEEK a limitless realm of wonder...
...Many of the foremost authorities in this interesting lic pronouncements by the Conference, and by others and very up-to-date subject will afford those attending who have objected vehemently to being "represented" the summer school an unusual opportunity to become by certain spokesmen chosen to voice the opinions of well informed...
...It is some years since the death of Don of us, something like a throng of friends...
...were devoted to the fostering and formulating of plans Everyone who bows his head to that Power is a sharer for what he foresaw would one day be a great Panin the intimate, precious consciousness of a Voice American Catholic Congress in the United States...
...Man feeds upon the basic pleasure of union with his fellows...
...prominent than Bishop Walsh, of Trenton, New JerIt is, of course, true that not every agent selected sey, who founded an institution to train women for will prove competent to perform the task assigned to work as nuns among the Italians in his diocese...
...American seeker after enlightenment reverences as What is the scope of the National Catholic Welfare "lectures...
...more fragrant under their new title than Tartuffe after We may regret this elevation, on general no less confession, Moore's famous shattered vase, or the than personal grounds...
...It does prove, of which can, through travel, be made beautifully after all, the unattractive character of even the most visible to the eye...
...The real are beginning to attract on the part of that element trick has been to dart through the meshes of the parole of the public which connects the small hours of the system...
...very much to make our own movement possible and Prison and plenty of it, though not a pleasant, is neverprogressively successful...
...and others began the difficult work of cisions of the Conference are binding morally, the trying to make the Americanization process through Archbishop's letter courageously implies that loyalty which it had to pass more human, more redemptive, to the common cause of religion demands a fair and more spiritual...
...Who knows but we Published weekly and copyrighted 1925, in the United States by the Calvert Publishing Corporation, 25 Vanderbilt Avenue, shall live more joyously now, in a common consciousNew York City, N. Y. ness of happy and profitable mystery...
...But all reprieve...
...Naturalism," upon manuals and books of travel ; and that music and says M. Baumann, "tends to reduce a man to a mere drama are the preoccupations of the elect of Park and play of instincts...
...And if we add a word here, it of the United States to our visiting foreign guests, is simply to say that as a result of the magnificent the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, monsignori, and homage paid to the central Reality of Christendom, priests on their voyage of homage to the Eucharist renewed courage has 'been given to all those of the will have as a result the fostering of brotherly ties and laity who, in whatever manner, struggle to carry on religious affiliations of...
...His fellow-citizens, who have profited sent what seems to them a "programmatic" attitude by his kindliness and example, will be glad to hear of struck up by a few individuals connected with the Con- his recent appointment as Papal Chamberlain with the 232 THE COMMONWEAL July 7, 1926 Grand Cross of Saint Gregory, which is the highest persons, breaks down just where so many recent rehonor a Catholic layman can receive from his Church...
...cumulation of evidence he asserts that the Atlantis of fable and twilit history occupied the site at present THAT a philosophical mind is not incompatible with covered by the mournful salt marshes known to Tunithe art of being a criminal-though proved long ago sians as Shottel Jerid...
...It is only the saint who THE list of Hispanic prelates who attended the worships and labors best in silent faith, even in the Eucharistic Congress is a long and estimable one...
...By what authority is it sanctioned...
...But we cannot, if we are clear-sighted, ignore it, and we A YEAR or so ago the suggestion was made in one will not, if we be wise, discard its possibilities for an of New York's liberal weeklies that a map of apostolate...
...shop" in Paris and take over the galleries of the Palais Royal for an international display of the scenic beauty, SO many events of urgent timeliness have crowded fine books and pictures, and other material evidence upon the past few weeks that China, as a topic for of culture and thought which each constituent member discussion, has fallen somewhat out of the public has to offer the world, is one of the best decisions mind...
...mystical wordlessness which only deserts know...
...could be named in America...
...Poets and more intimate than those we have enjoyed in the and philosophers, public servants and workers among past...
...ference...
...But even if conclusive proof cannot be obtained, present hasty hegira...
...amination of the files of the New York Public Library, Writers raise men and women from the dust of their conducted by the New York Times, may not go so far, imagination, endow them with motives and actions, but it throws some light on the different tastes in read- cast them loose among the facts of life, reward and ing to be noted in different sections of the Empire City, punish at their will, and, should the whim seize them, and incidentally, from the very fact that it yields re- are empowered to make of their romance a sheer sarsults which can be locally tabulated, suggests that eco- casm upon lives as God has made them and willed nomic reasons may lie at the root of a good many them...
...It was solved chiefly through the ing force...
...because its own social problem has largely been solved...
...All who realize the loftiness of the nual meeting, weigh suggestions and complaints that goal which the directors of the school have set for may have arisen...
...Incidentally, it either ignored or treated with perfunctory notice are is to be hoped that it will avail to lift the blight that worth more than a passing attention, and the fact has descended upon one of the most charming corners that neither reaches us directly from the Flowery Land of old Paris, suggestive alike to the lover of archidoes not diminish their importance...
...Modification of the parole laws by a legis- that Dr...
...The clearing house for criticism and counsel, S OME years ago people began to notice round about and the moment for direction, is the September meet- them a new population which, vast and important ing of the bishops who then receive the reports of though it was, usually had to be satisfied with the the administrative committee and their departments...
...nese bishop...
...these United States was much needed, indicating, by Viewed from a philosophic aspect, the novel will tints and intensities of tints, the depth to which culture always carry a taint of anarchy...
...Both are merely suggested surance of peace, if it is ever to reach the world, will possibilities, but they rest upon a solid foundation of come, the contrast needs no stressing...
...theless an effective inducement to refrain from social malpractice...
...are dealing with the bishops of the country and their agents...
...This year Reverend places is of exceptional importance because it sheds Francis P. Duffy, the new president, has arranged an new and unusually clear light upon a matter which exceptionally attractive course of what the honest has divided Catholic opinion during recent years...
...Appartogether fresh, dewy, and crepuscular...
...its prompt action has frequently brought ex- generosity of Mr...
...At least there is much in what the editor of the Chicago Evening Post had to say: "There are those who believe that the world will be happier when all miracle and mystery are eliminated from its thought and faith...
...E LSEWHERE in this issue we offer an account, as adequate as space permits, of the Eucharistic Con- ONE hopes that the rejoicing and welcome accorded gress toward which the eyes of America were turned by Chicago, New York, and all the interlying cities during several weeks...
...But one story of the hair-brained courage that than the dried and lifeless exercise which it used to made the feat possible should be salvaged and fea- be, thanks is due first of all to the intrepid excavators tured wherever and whenever the saga is resting...
...and it is impossible to do this without taking count Any conclusions drawn from an examination so of the reaction of supernatural motives...
...This point is suggested directly by an interview the poor-every file of the vast troop who adjoin a with Cardinal Mundelein which expressed a special weltimeless purpose to their professional labors-have come to the prelates of the Spanish nations of the sometimes been hampered by that sense of loneliness, Americas, and voiced the hope of forming more inof isolation from the living crowd, which is so detri- timate bonds of fellowship between the North and mental to all acting forces...
...We are all Americans, having at heart country, so far departed from the "childlike and the good of religion in our union in the Faith of bland" attitude expected from his compatriots that the Christ and the Church of the Holy See...
...Nocturette" ently it has finished with the ancient and classic wisdom and "noctorium" are among suggestions that find most which brought comfort in its day of stress and penury...
...In an article lower East Side...
...preferences and aversions where the printed word is In view of all these difficulties, Catholic critics concerned...
...July 7, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 229 the average human soul, fettered to the concerns of THE COMMONWEAL its kind, is chilled by the coldness, rebuffed by the hostility, of the surrounding world...
...In Rome-the abdication by desirable from the standpoint of the United States...
...The stately garvia that clearing house of national incompatibilities dens and colonnades of what was once the centre of which post-war wisdom established, perhaps as a warn- fashionable Paris have never recovered from the blow ing, at Geneva...
...that residents of the Bronx, largely just published in Les Lettres, M. Louis Baumann excomposed of families who have graduated into pros- amines the possibilities of the Catholic novel and the perity from this congested neighborhood, vote heavily responsibilities of the Catholic novelist...
...But it does read novels, But those less under the spell of nomenclature than and the novels it reads are those written by the men the New Jersey mayor who makes the happy sugges- whom vogue and popularity have elevated, often with tion to Manhattan's Mayor Walker, will insist on con- scant intrinsic justification, into the role of prophets sidering "noctoriums" (or "noctoria") not essentially and preachers for our time...
...The civil prefecture is given to the ordinary dead-level of news...
...and granted the precedents already established, success may be nearer than THE proposal of the League of Nations to "open most of us suppose at present...
...RESOLUTIONS adopted at the Pan-American Con- THE momentous innovation has been taken in the ference, recently in session at Panama, will probably quiet and matter-of-fact manner typical of the body to not receive more attention in the United States than which time and eternity are one...
...On the contrary, we believe that should such a day dawn it will be a day of doom for everything most precious in human life, for everything which makes life truly significant...
...He is no longer reading a mere book, or detectto the warden in maintaining good order and as a ing relative grammatical orthodoxy...
...standard words on evolution...
...The second, and more comforting item, comes late delegates, that will enable us to form concerted from a quarter in whose direction the League of Nameasures to meet attacks upon our faith, repair the tions, we are sure, more than once casts a wistful and damages of the past, and renew our mutual forces for envious glance...
...The financial support of During the years of its existence it has developed a this far-sighted endeavor was, from the beginning, a machinery of service and has proved itself an educat- difficult problem...
...He finds the for such headliners in the independence movement as solution of the problem in the fact that the sincere Dreiser, Cabell, and Lewis, splitting their ticket with Catholic novelist is bound to be both a realist and a books on interior decoration, but turning a blind eye supernaturalist-but never a naturalist...
...Luckily there are critics, no less Catholic, who serious literature and the older classics still hugs the take a milder and more indulgent view...
...If the carefully formed guess by such engaging persons as Raffles-is established be- is true, the Pillars of Hercules were desert mountains yond a doubt by the readiness of numerous New York and Hercules reached the Hesperides Gardens after offenders to get inside the gates of Sing Sing...
...upper Madison Avenues...
...During a recent discussion upon inflicted on them in the last days of the Second Empire July 7, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 231 by the piercing of the Avenue de 1'Opera near by...
...Borchardt's hypothesis is already substantiated lature frightened with statistics has brought about the fact...
...If anything would emtions of the congress evidences of "good will" rather phasize the comparison, it is to be found in the words than of "impending political developments...
...it is only today in the presence here of so many influential South American Catholics that the question NO one could overestimate the value of this revivi- comes to the fore again...
...good things, but must limit ourselves to noticing the These questions have been asked with more than ordi- attention given to sociology in its varied aspects...
...nary bitterness by many who have disagreed with pub...
...No more could the bright, sceptical oil leak,' He wrote down, `She will stop.' . . . I imps in the rear row dub Homer's dactyls "hot air" asked Bennett what we should do and that old `son of and scout the very existence of Hector...
...Now we have seen, all the South...
...At Genevapolitical tradition the significance of which, as a force the assertion of imperialism, with all its sorry conmaking for international...
...This in- Julio Betancourt, for years the esteemed representative cludes, besides those who cherish the same faith and of our sister republic of Colombia, whose interests fidelities, the numberless others who stood apart but and activities toward the close of a long diplomatic welcomed magnanimously in their hearts the bravery career in Washington and various capitals of Europe of a declaration for the divine Power of the Master...
...the Church, by a simple gesture, of any privileges Washington is reported to have seen in the delibera- based upon race or color...
...Concerned at the attention their activities this would have been illusory speculation...
...The realist takes the world whole...
...It would be much more valuable, besides Fashion and the more reputable forms of commerce being more charitable and well-mannered, if this critihave largely deserted them, and the visitor of rumi- cism honestly and fearlessly named the individuals nant bent who turns aside from the bustle around the it has in mind while pledging its support to Catholic Galleries du Louvre to enjoy their solitude is dis- national action as such...
...fied enthusiasm...
...dignified form of existence in gaol...
...amity, is well illustrated by comitants of spheres of influence, consular rights, and the work of the Central American court of justice...
...This him, and equally true that mistakes in method and was Villa Maria, which today is national in its scope information will occur...
...This nicely regulated method of readjust- morning with reveille rather than with taps, a movement, designed by sympathetic and usually academic ment has been set on foot among the night-club magJuly 7, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 233 nates, of which Samuel L. Weiss, of Club Alabam, class, exists midway between the category who are seems to be leader, to sweeten the hectic implication working up from poverty and alien citizenship and contained in the word "night-club" by getting rid of the category for whose appraisal all the world outthe sinister word altogether and replacing it with spreads its intellectual wares, and that it is this first something which, except to patrons cursed with a class which looks for light and leading to the more classical education, will convey nothing that is not al- serious and imposing of our native novelists...
...One might have supposed that so widely famed a resort as Sing Sing ANCIENT wisdom assures us that a dog with a carried with it something like a badge of honor for bad name may be considered as good as hanged...
...and a man who has seen a grim vision THERE was a spontaneity and conclusiveness in the of resisting walls will, if his conduct is guided by no welcome that roared and snowed along New York's better motives, be relatively scared into decency...
...But these of Huen-Hoafu, up to now comprised in the prefecture resolutions, offered, of course, by citizens without apostolic of Southern Pekin, suggested itself as a unit authority to commit their governments to a program fit to receive a separate religious organization...
...The mighty through the ages because it commands eter- coming of the world war and other happenings have nity...
...abroad, not at all unfriendly to the medium, have been The purpose of this brief article is not to reexamine known to assert that a novel is a case of conscience, the reading proclivities of the population of Long and that a really Catholic novel is a contradiction in Island, but it may be noted in passing that a love for terms...
...We should like to point out the many Conference...
...The device of clearing oneself of a bad name by giv- Having evoluted, it does not take the old interest in ing oneself a pretty one will appeal to some people...
...The re- of the recent Papal Encyclical upon the urgent need cent disagreeable finale of the Tacna-Arica controversy of indigenous churches: "For what were missions inis not likely to prejudice the citizens of this country tended, if not for the establishment of the Church of in favor of more complex and intimate association Christ in these vast countries in a stable and dependwith neighboring governments...
...Assume that a tremendous true that the widely advertised comforts of the prison earthquake, of the fierce sort so customary in Mediare not the chief cause of the onrush...
...But all this can never justify and about as fruitful a source of religious energy as the conclusion that the Conference itself is a mistake...
...The first arrives tecture and the student of history...
...Prisoners entering after July 1 one envies the effect which speculations like these must will not profit by the system of "compensations" for have upon the youthful enquirer into classical literagood behavior in force during recent years as an aid ture...
...and its conduct has been, with very in Villa Maria was characteristic of one who realized few exceptions, dignified and exemplary...
...contemptuous label, "Dago...
...favor, and perhaps to hint how complete and final is Equally it has not arrived at the status of the class the burial of the bad old past, the term "noctician," so far removed from material anxieties that the culwhose startling affinity with "mortician" will not tivation of the aesthetic side of life can become a busiescape notice, has been preempted for the official whom ness...
...Programs charto the heart of good Senator Berenger...
...An ex- tive usurpation of the Godlike function of creation...
...Two items, however, which the lay press has that much debated body has taken...
Vol. 4 • July 1926 • No. 9
