The New Inquisition
THE
COMMONWEAL
A Weekly Review of Literature, The Arts, and Public Af[alrs. Volume V New York, Wednesday, March 30, 1927 Number 2I CONTENTS The New Inquisition .................... Week...
...Morality and the Law...
...The reason...
...THE COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Literature, The Arts, and Public Af[alrs...
...There is internal evidence that it was written by someone not very conversant with Catholic practice and discipline...
...That this is regarded as some- thing very much below the desideratum does not affect the New Republic's argument, which is that there is a burning educational issue in America, upon which the chief executive, if a Catholic, can hardly be trusted to do his duty unhampered by "partly conscious controls...
...The conflict, we are then advised, is one whose reper- cussions are likely to extend beyond domestic limits and to plunge the United States, with their Catholic President at their head, into an embroilment whose mere possibility is "terrible to contemplate...
...Nothing is to be gained by treating its recrudescence as a sudden and peremptory challenge, nor by dreaming that a mere recital of the qualifications laid down by the wisdom of our forefathers for the highest ofllce within the nation's gift will exorcise the spectre...
...Mary Rolwing, James J. Daly, Mavis Mclntosh, Ethel Romig Fuller, Madefrey Odhner, Roland Ahearn 58I The Play...
...Much the same is true of the Mexican imbroglio...
...Men, after all, live by faith, and, where the character of the elect is not suffi- cient guarantee, other guarantees are an idle gesture...
...The pronouncement of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Oregon case, two years ago, is the Magna Charta of the parochial school...
...After admitting that the hierarchy "has pub- licly disowned any intention of fomenting armed re-bellion" south of the Rio Grande, our contemporary goes on to give his reasons why this gesture of docility is an unsafe index in forecasting possible relations be- tween Church and state nearer home...
...56I 563 566 567 Katherine Br6gy 568 I Know a Lady (verse...
...Also, so little have Catholics "excommunicated" the public school that probably many hundreds of Catho- lics who read these lines will be living in communities where, failing parochial schools, Catholic children at- tend it and rely for their religious instruction on such Catechism classes as can be held on Sunday afternoons or week-day evenings...
...For, in no department whatsoever of civilized life as it has come to be lived, are such undertakings as he suggests made a prerequisite for acceptance...
...To say that the religious issue was "injected" into the last presidential campaign by avowed enemies of Catholic faith and tradition tells only half the truth...
...There are the germs of a serious conflict in this difference of opinion...
...In the first place, the right of Catholic parents to have their children educated, where possible, in schools chosen by themselves, is no longer a matter of American theory, even "official...
...But indeed, all the implications of this extraordinary contribution to prevailing confusions are so bizarre that one can only conclude its author, in an honest zeal for the party out of power and an honest dismay at the dilemma that seems to confront it, has let himself be carried beyond the confines of common sense and good taste...
...Merely to put the question, it seems to us, is to answer it...
...There is evidence, too, that the tangled affairs of Mexico, rather than domes- tic problems, lie nearest the writer's heart...
...From the point of view of Catholicism, education is a religious activity and belongs to the Church...
...R. Dana Skinner 582 Books...
...John A. Ryan 575 Dancer (verse...
...Ultimately what the Calles government de- mands is an opportunity of educating the Mexican Indian" and "we have yet to discover the Catholic who, in relation to this matter, does not see red...
...It is not the purpose of the present article to ex-amine the editorial, after Mr...
...This is that the plain and popular citizen who is New York's state executive be invited to make his position clear upon a series of misgivings which kept the New Republic's support of his "political punch" a lukewarm and tentative affair three years ago, and may preclude it next year altogether...
...John Hanlon 576 The Sinclair Lewis Industry...
...Irene H. Wilson 572 The Symbol of the Dante Award...
...A pretty good proof of how deep the virus has gone is of[ered by an editorial in a recent issue of the New Republic, a journal so d,dicated to the liberal and non-sectarian solution in all possible conjunctures that its appearance in such a quarter might be taken as registering an extreme limit of prejudice...
...Rightly, the world in its wisdom assumes the greater to include the less, the general the particular...
...587 THE NEW INQUISITION W rHENEVER any political or ethical problem is nearing the point where illusions will have to be let go and the issue thrashed out with a full admis- sion of its contentiousness, it is useful and edifying to examine the terrain upon which it will be decided and the parties who will busy themselves with the decision...
...Michael Williams 577 Maryland Tercentenary...
...Orientation from the position occupied" (a phrase familiar a few years ago in tactical handbooks) is just as needful in the war of ballots as in the war of bul- lets...
...That Catholics detest the Calles r~gime, that they do see a blight in it, terrible enough to earn the term "ac- cursed," that their common sense and painfully acquired experience pierce such flimsy special pleading as that the "ultimate" (precious wordl) end of closed churches, imprisoned or scattered religious, wholesale arrests and firing squads is a "better opportunity of educating" peons, is perhaps the most accurate observa- tion the New Republic permits itself to make...
...By an analogy by no means so clear to us as to its dis- coverer, it locates the eventual danger solidly and squarely in the educational sphere...
...George N. Shuster, Edwin Clark, Barry Byrne, J. Elliot Ross, Mary Kolars 583 The Quiet Corner...
...It does more...
...The two main points (we follow the New Republic's own order) upon which the recesses of Governor Smith's mind need to be explored by means of some political "Ask Me Another l" are Mexico and educa- tion...
...The first, and most vital, is that New York's gov- ernor shall abandon a "refusal to speak" upon the ef- fect his religious affiliations might have on political action contingent to election, and let his admittedly powerful mind be "searched" a little more thoroughly than heretofore...
...Any an- swer, therefore, that Governor Smith could furnish to a questionnaire on the subject would be Catholic in so far as constitutional and constitutional in so far as Catholic...
...It is "res adjudicata," resting upon the decision of the highest tribunal in the land...
...Mark O. Shriver 58o A Communication...
...A large body of opinion, representing, he feels sure, "the better part of the popular mind" demands en-lightenment, is withholding its support till enlighten- ment shall reach it, and, failing enlightenment, will refuse to be led into darkness under the old Demo- cratic party banner...
...Neither in army, navy, judiciary, nor at the marriage altar, nor before ordination to the ministry--nor at any contin- gency where solemn oaths are taken and solemn vows registered, has the thought ever entered the head of man to present the candidate with a list of possible temptations where loyalty might be strained, and to ask a separate understanding on each...
...George N. Shuster 573 Conduct and the Cosmos...
...Productive Fortune...
...Dante and His Vision of Life...
...A possible alternative to his silence, namely that full assurance is already felt by the very strong organizations of men of every shade of belief who stand behind him, is one the writer hardly skirts...
...Week by Week...
...Volume V New York, Wednesday, March 30, 1927 Number 2I CONTENTS The New Inquisition...
...Both instances seem singularly ill-chosen...
...What can S62 THE COMMONWEAL March3 o, I927 be done about it...
...The "Catholic cook," for instance, whose "exceptional persistence" in church- going on Sunday mornings is noted, might throw some light on such a statement as that the Church refuses to "bestow the consolations of religion upon those who have strayed from her fold...
...Such side- issues fall into their proper place beside the major con- tention...
...But we may, without offense, ask this: What possible value would the assurances which the New Republic thinks timely, possess, given by a man who could as- sume office with any such design in the back of his head...
...Grewgious's famous method, point by point...
...All signs at present verifiable would indicate that within a few months the people of the United States will be confronted with a religious issue and that it will have either to be frankly met or shirked a second time by a compromise that will damage one of the two great political parties past hope of speedy recovery...
...To ask more, as does the New Republic, may have the air of imparting clarity into a dubious situation...
...Odium theologicum" has undoubtedly been latent in America for years...
...But that any President, loyal to his oath and to the precepts against foreign entanglements left behind by the great- est American who ever took it, would involve his coun- try in a foreign adventure that must alienate the whole of South America for a generation, not because the national interest called for a diplomatic rupture, but because religious resentment lent a relish to the adven- ture, is a presumption so monstrous and insulting that it is hard to be courteous while considering it...
...But what it really means is the erection of a brand new in- quisition in our midst...
...According to official Amer- ican theory, it is a secular activity and belongs to the state...
...asks our didactic contemporary, and proceeds to make certain suggestions...
...580 Poems...
Vol. 5 • March 1927 • No. 21
