Communications
476 THE COM MONWEAL September I I, I929 ,,i my son, as a souvenir of this disaster and your heroism. It is a medal we wore during the great war when I served with the destroyer squadrons...
...the parents must be given steady work at steady wages...
...Then, practically the only other source of income for the Mexican September 1I, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL ,t77 in this town is a large poultry warehouse, where, again, seasonal employment is offered to men, women and young girls...
...and they are, perforce, accustomed to being laid off for long periods of time...
...Even a very superficial knowledge of the Italian system of public education makes this clear...
...As a teacher of Spanish in the schools there, my sympathy was enlisted primarily in order to teach catechism at a small mission church ministered to by one of the Augustinian Fathers at Topeka...
...Such exclusion did nothing to strengthen belief in our reasonableness, while it deprived us of a valuable talklng point in the contrast to be drawn between our renunciations at the Versailles peace table and the quite general scramble by the other nations for the spoils of war...
...O the Edltor:--Will you accept a little tribute of appreciation of your publication of The Last Troubadour...
...Atlee Edwards was proud of his medal...
...It is time that American Catholics showed Christian fraternalism to these unfortunate exiles who are in need of much help--social, educational and religious...
...Mass is not a prayer meeting primarily, nor a hymn-singing occasion...
...This scholar, however, by the express will of the Fascist government, has not taught for the last four years (i.e., since the beginning of the negotiations between the Vatican and the government) ; so that during this period this chair has been practically vacant...
...What is offered in place of the old plan of individual sobriety carried on through parish work...
...it is often sung irrelevantly...
...As for the hymn, "O Lord, I am not worthy," I do not think it needs defenders...
...it is time that Americans and especially American Catholics, began to realize the problem that is before them in the presence of these large colonies of Mexicans in the West and Southwest...
...One doesn't have to have a delicate aesthetic digestion to deprecate irrelevant hymn singing at Mass...
...The mother was dying a slow and painful death from cancer, and she lay all day on an old bedstead, wrapped in bits of blankets and shawls, skeleton-like, her face brown and withered as that of a centenarian...
...It ill becomes the members of the Church which alone lays claim to positive teaching, to offer merely a negation on a great moral question...
...Mankato, Minn...
...Since their families are usually large, and living conditions bad, there is more sickness than there should be, and the bit of money put by for a rainy day is quickly used up...
...In 1912 the writer was privileged to spend many precious hours at Maillane with Mistral listening to his own rhapsodies of his native land, which no inducement was ever great enough to make him desert even for a visit...
...The other officers at the mess table delivered over that sheet of radio news the finest composite eulogy I have ever heard given to a fellow-man...
...organists do strange things with it in their improvisations...
...MARY ISABEL WINSLOW...
...it is the official act of the Church worship...
...The quarrel is not with the letter writer for her defense of the hymn, but for her manner of defense...
...One needs only to have an understanding of the fact that the liturgical laws of the Church govern the matter...
...AMBROGIO DONINI...
...O the Editor :--Since you are interested in the Mexican problem in the United States, perhaps you would like to hear something about the conditions in which these unfortunate people live in one of the larger towns of central Kansas...
...Why do we not continue the simple Catholic practice of individual sobriety through parish organizations...
...Two years prior to my visit a "Colonel Cody"--no relative of the great "Bill," however--(an aviator, by the way)--in visiting the "Mus6e Ariatan" at Arles, met the poet there with his dog, became so infatuated with M. Mistral that the Colonel gave it to him...
...AS TO INTERNATIONALISM Allston, Mass...
...On another subject, however, a portion of our press is quite vocal, viz., internationalism...
...It is a medal we wore during the great war when I served with the destroyer squadrons in the Mediterranean...
...Short in a recent number of The Commonweal propounds this question, and at the same time offers a number of possible solutions, none of which he accepts but which are useful in narrowing the field...
...it will be introduced now...
...CAPITAL PUNISHMENT New York, N. Y. O the Editor :--In the August 21 issue of The Commonweal you comment editorially upon Governor Green's veto of the bill passed by the Michigan legislature to restore capital punishment, pointing out the regressive character of the legislation with reference to the management of the crime problem...
...However the stimulating letter of Mr...
...PAUL O. KOMORA, Educational ztssistant, The National Committee for Mental Hygiene...
...That such was the situation was clearly confirmed which, in spite of the article of the treaty and of the explicit wishes of the Vatican, decided, as Mussolini himself stated in his address to the Parliament, that "the article of the treaty has no retroactive value" and that the former priests teaching in the Italian public schools "shall remain where they are...
...As for the university professors, there are in Italy only two chairs which might be considered as of religious subjects: the chair of Church History at the University of Naples, held by a layman, and the chair of the History of Christianity at the University of Rome, held by Professor Ernesto Buonaiuti...
...We read in the radio press news that Atlee Edwards had died...
...HELEN HUGHES HIELSCHER...
...The entente is tottering and a new balance of power threatens...
...Working under such a system of weeks of work, followed by months, perhaps, of enforced idleness, the laboring man in free America is not nearly as well off as the old southern slave, because the latter had at least a lodging gratis...
...I say share advisedly, for rare indeed is the family which has a house of its own...
...But are they to be interpreted also as favoring the abolition of capital punishment for capital crimes in all cases, and the substitution of other penalties ? As I understand it, Catholic thought on the subject has been on the whole in sympathy with the principle of capital punishment, and I have not been impressed by the arguments against it by modern propagandists for abolition...
...later I volunteered my services in helping to start a Red Cross clinic for Mexican mothers and babies...
...This is no discredit to the knight errant of the Catholic press, for the question is one that does not lend itself to a direct answer, being on a par with that classic, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet...
...CHRISTOPHER I. FITZGERALD...
...Th6r~se Lavauden's article is a poem in itself...
...IGNATIUS KELLY...
...Whether the "principle of parity" means equality in ships and guns, speed and power, or something else, and what, we are not told...
...These are founded on objective appropriateness and not directly on the wishes of the insensitive majority or the sensitive minority...
...Legislation alone is futile...
...Ever afterward up to the time of his death, I am told, the dog was his inseparable companion...
...Do they really believe in their hearts that the Eighteenth Amendment will successfully accomplish what they have struggled for so long...
...COMMUNICATIONS WHAT IS THE LATERAN ACCORD ? Cambridge, Mass...
...Their new experience had convinced them that they were not in their right place in the ranks of the clergy, and they preferred to get out and live decent lives as laymen rather than lie to their consciences and to the Church and be objects of scandal and corruption under cover, as many other hypocrites choose to do...
...As for your other statement, it is just the opposite that is true...
...MEXICAN LABORERS IN THE UNITED STATES Madison, Wis...
...Professor Buonaiuti wore his cassock until, in accordance with Article 29, i, of the concordat, he was forced by the civil authorities to discard it...
...As usual, our American press knows little or nothing about it, or else a strange inhibition renders it dumb---as it did recently in the case of Mexico...
...Better an 189o model than no car at all...
...not one of these former priests has tahght or is teaching any religious subject...
...If La Miougrano-entre-duberto can be found in translation, I should be gratified to know where...
...Professor La Piana's remark that the elimination of the former priests from the public schools would be a great blow to the educational standing and progress in Italy was based on the figures quoted above and on the knowledge that most of the former priests teaching in the lyceums (colleges) and universities are among the best Italian scholars, who could not be easily replaced by equally competent men...
...it may be doubted, therefore, whether any such superiority exists in other fields--for instance, naval disarmament and its related subject of parity, of which latter we are informed that an agreement on the principle has been reached...
...476 THE COM MONWEAL September I I, I929 ,,i my son, as a souvenir of this disaster and your heroism...
...2) that "not a single one of the so-called 'modernist clergy' in Italy has taught any but a religious subject...
...This figure given by the Premier, was based on a survey made by the Italian Department of Public Education, which shows that about six hundred of them are teaching in the elementary schools, more than three hundred in the gymnasia and lyceums (high schools and colleges) and about a dozen in the universities (graduate and professional schools...
...As to reparations, it is at least questionable whether our government did this country a genuine service when it excluded from the reparations conferences the subject of debts due to us...
...In the gymnasia and lyceums there was no religious teaching at all...
...A recent letter to The Commonweal makes the usual case for the old familiar hymns that please the majority, and it does so in the usual obvious and sentimental manner...
...I can never forget wandering through the narrow streets of Maillane with the poet---entering the church where he now reposes and seeing his "mausoleum," a replica of the pavillion of La Reine Jeanne at Les Baux where that famous queen bestowed her gifts to winners in the t~rst lists of the troubadours...
...But after all, the hymns to be sung at Mass, the kind, the time, permission or denial of permission to sing them are part of a liturgical problem, and such problems are treated and decided by the liturgical authority of the Church...
...At the time of his death he was serving as executive officer of the President's yacht, the Mayflower...
...We surely do not think that opposition to the Eighteenth Amendment is advancing the cause of temperance, yet this is where a great many of our people find themselves...
...There is too much conceded in the first premises...
...As an Italian layman and professor at the University of Rome, I think that the readers of The Commonweal are entitled to know the truth about these facts, and I am sure that, as you are loyal to your public, you will publish this letter...
...As aliens speaking a foreign language, the Mexicans are already suffering from an inferiority complex, and in some states are considered lower, racially, than Negroes...
...I thought of that dinner party in the Bosphorus while at breakfast in the fleet last winter...
...the more than three hundred former priests teaching in these schools taught other subjects, mostly the classics, modern languages, political history or the sciences...
...Whether they mean the Soviet, as the pink professors believe, or the empire, as some of the little nations fear, or merely a gentlemen's agreement to tie up a conference before it is held, as has been suggested--these various vlew-points are not made clear...
...For the most part they are good, courteous, affable, hard-working souls, deeply religious, easily led and amenable to reason...
...A word to the wise is or should be sufficient...
...This latter work brought me in touch with the families in their homes and opened my eyes to the sorrows and tragedies of many a household...
...That they are backward educationally is hardly their own fault ; how many of the self-styled Nordic races would excel in the learned professions if they were snatched from school as they finished the sixth grade, and made to work at heavy manual labor ten hours a day...
...WHAT SHALL THE FAITHFUL SING...
...Why have the leaders in Catholic temperance work lald down their arms...
...You rightly question the wisdom of a policy of severity in dealing with criminals, and your statements that "detachment and not passion" should be the mood governing their treatment, and that "only through study, and never through vengeance, can we decrease their danger to society" express admirably what is considered by modern students of the problem as the enlightened point of view...
...As to the first, it is enough to quote Mussolini's words in his address to the Italian Chamber of Deputies on May 13: "The individuals in such a situation [former priests teaching in public schools] are about a thousand...
...The failure of "modern thought" to distinguish between a good and the abuse of that good deceives some unwary people...
...For most of these former priests the general Italian public and many of their former colleagues have a great respect...
...A bust of Theodore Roosevelt, who had been his guest, adorned the mantlepiece in his study...
...The Commonweal invites its readers to send in communications expressing individual views of all topics that are of public interest, regardless of whether or not such topics have been previously discussed in its columns.--The Editors...
...In the elementary schools religious teaching, made obligatory a few years ago, has from the beginning been under the supervision of ecclesiastical authorities, and therefore the six hundred former priests teaching in these schools have nothing whatever to do with it...
...Else why have they discarded the methods that brought an older generation some measure of success ? Have they lost faith in the plan of individual sobriety into which school Father Mathew gathered his millions...
...Again the eternal why...
...O the Editor :--It is very easy to make a case for the hymns which appeal to devotional spirit rather than to artistic taste, and humility often runs away with itself acknowledging possession of the spirit and denying possession of the other...
...Its wheels had been removed, a couple of partitions put in, the walls covered with paper to keep out the whistling Kansas winds, and in this wretched place lived no less than eight persons...
...THE LAST TROUBADOUR Chicago, Ill...
...The great patrlot-poet, like many another idealist who has never crossed the Atlantic, was an enthusiast on the subject of the United States of America...
...But however they differ about internationalism, they are all agreed that "nationalism" is a sin against political modernism...
...There is no doubt that the protagonists of prohibition have a tremendous advantage in the fact that they have a positive plan...
...By far the largest number of them left the Church only after the war, having served either in the sanitary corps, or as officers in the army for four years in the trenches...
...often three and four families rent parts of the same miserable hovel...
...But the most misleading statement of your editorial is that which labels as "modernistic clergy" this group of former priests...
...Who gives us guarantee that though evil passions prevail at home, they will subside abroad ? Always the contending forces of good and evil are at work, the latter unfortunately being the better organized and always on the job...
...478 THE COMMONWEAL September II, 1929 Meanwhile, evidence accumulates that the European powers are approaching the parting of the ways...
...I could go on multiplying instances of this kind for some time, but to what end...
...Birds of a feather flock together," and the dove of peace will fare badly where the vultures are gathered together...
...Is the battle won...
...O the Editor :--Nothing transpiring to date at the Hague Conference indicates a superiority of statesmen over experts in the field of finance...
...There are two statements in the editorial on which a justification of that drastic measure is based: (I) that "the number of such men [former priests teaching in public schools] is exceedingly small...
...I knew one self-respecting widow who, with her five children, aged six to twenty, ate, slept and spent most of her waking hours in one room devoid, of course, of any of the modern conveniences...
...There were two other families in this house, and they did not think it crowded...
...Do they believe the work of such men as Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland was fruitless, or do they consider such an organization as the C. T. A. a delusion...
...Clarity is as scarce as charity in high politics...
...As for the "modernists," such as Professor Buonaiutl and others teaching either in Italy or elsewhere, they, though excommunicated by the Church for their views and their scholarly activities, still consider themselves members both of the Church and of the ecclesiastical profession...
...But these statements are altogether false and show that your source of information is unreliable...
...Toledo, Ohio...
...I am sure that he wore it to his dying day...
...O the Editor :--The editorial which recently appeared in The Commonweal concerning the article of the Lateran treaty which takes away from excommunicated and former Catholic priests the right to hold government offices or offices in any public administration, shows that its writer, in critizing some remarks made by professor La Piana of Harvard University, is altogether unfamiliar with the facts on which he comments...
...Is it not an affront to the memory of the dead who died in war thus to make an offense of their sacrifice for love of country...
...His erect figure, flowing locks and clear-cut features recalled pictures of the great American scout...
...He was ever amused and I fancy rather pleased, to be reminded of his resemblance to our crass Buffalo Bill...
...The only daughter, an eleven-year-old, was growing up an illiterate, unable to read either Spanish or English, because she had to be both nurse and housekeeper...
...Another household thought themselves fortunate in having for their dwelling-place, close by the tracks where the trains were switching all day long, an old box-car...
...Their claim has always been that of belonging to the spiritual body of the Church, from which no excommunication can separate them...
...She took in washings which she did out of doors on sunny days, to eke out the slender sums made by picking chickens...
...Several chairs of the history of religions in general, which exist in a few Italian universities, are held by laymen, or in one or two cases by priests in regular standing with the Church...
...Let us sing "ad mentum ecclesiae," guided by Church authority and not by the desires of the insensitive majority...
...The Commonweal with characteristic chivalry leaps into the breach with an explanation--very sportsmanlike but not very convincing...
...Short raises another "why...
...In the first place, the greater number of men, fathers of families, are almost wholly dependent for work and wages on the precarious employment offered to them by the various railroads, work along the tracks, which varies in amount according to the weather and the season...
...Was it a useless effort when the priest taught his First Communion class to avoid the taste of alcohol until they were confirmed, and the bishop at confirmation gave them the pledge until they were twenty-one...
...The mother in spite of her household duties and the care of her ten children, found time to have a small garden of bright geraniums in the narrow dirt yard, not more than twenty feet from the tracks...
...ISABEL GARRISOI...
...In the second generation of Mexican immigrants there is a decided intellectual promise, but the difficulty now is to enable these ambitious boys and girls to stay in school through the high school period...
...O the Editor :--"Why are Catholic leaders so truculent, seemingly, toward the Eighteenth Amendment and the crusade it ushers in...
...Is The Commonweal deviating from the traditional position on this question, or have I misread your comment...
...while this modern tenant, poorest of the poor, must continue to pay for his share of some tumbledown shack or crazy, dilapidated house in the Mexican district...
...REV...
...To me she seemed a striking example of the underprivileged child...
...0 Lord, I am not worthy" may be a perfectly sweet hymn and it may please many souls, but these are not adequate reasons for its being sung at Mass...
...She has felt the spell of "La Belie Provencia Gallica," she has inhaled the sweet scent of its lavender, cut likeness to the gay "cigale" droning among its golden lilies--or she could not have caught the spirit of its "F61ibrege" as she did...
...A third family of my acquaintance lived in a tiny house made entirely of old piano boxes, neatly painted and fenced in with chicken wire...
...WHY...
...it is frequently sung too much...
Vol. 10 • September 1929 • No. 19
