Ourselves and Others
October 2, x929 THE C O M 9 i i| ii i i reduce her total tonnage from 305,000 to 285,000 tons. More important still is acknowledgment of the principle of parity, which means the end of...
...We believe, however, that true significance of the coming meeting lies in the workaday hope that it may prove simply another one in a long series of such conferences held throughout the country...
...more than facts could stand for...
...Harvard is a background aga!nst which proponents of charity can speak hopefully, knowing as they do both the authority of the institution and the candor of its mind...
...Accordingly, there is a demand for the right locale, for adequately trained discussion leaders, and for truly representative audiences...
...Granted these things, discussion of religious differences generally leaves the participants thoroughly satisfied with their own positions, but quite convinced that these must include fairness and accuracy of judgment...
...Nobody expected that these activities would result in a wholesale suppression of what is termed "bigotry," but is nearly always a logical reaction to impressions superficial in character and crude of outline...
...We know of no other good recipe for spreading that habit...
...Or Catholics have met to discern whether their ideas regarding the world outside the Church were based upon the requisite charity and understanding...
...Secretly or otherwise, the American is always ashamed of injustice...
...The only difficulty is this: to be socially effective, the conference method must be employed almost constantly...
...But no abiding agreement can be reached unless there is some assurance that the rest of the world will conform to it...
...And unless the auspices are right, the floor will go to a trouble-maker--to a man interested not in seeing whether he has "got the other fellow right" but in proving that he can make the rest of men angry...
...But the fury which was here loosed upon the final resting places of priests and nuns, which tore down monuments and smashed crosses, is almost more of a blight upon the fine old town than the memory of witchcraft trials...
...Again, the more ambitious National Conference of Jews and Christians has invited men to consider together some of the more baffling problems of tolerance...
...It is therefore a pleasure to notice that the Calverti Round Table, of Boston, will conduct a seminar concerning the relations between Catholics, Jews and Protestants...
...Perhaps it was impolitic to have gone into these matters privately instead of in a general conference, thereby arousing suspicions which, however ridiculous, will impair the worth of any lasting work we may hope to accomplish...
...The place of meeting is Harvard University, the dates are November tz and 13, and the discussion outline is virtually the same as that followed at a conference held at Columbia University last year...
...Though Massachusetts has been commendably free of major conflicts between the groups, intelligent people realize that the situation may change for the worse almost instantly...
...Sometimes, as in the well-known Fairfield experiment, Protestants have met to test their attitude toward Catholics...
...There are immediate as well as specific reasons for calling such a meeting...
...OURSELVES AND OTHERS URING several years phenomena of intolerance and efforts to achieve spiritual generosity have alternated quickly, like traffic lights...
...Some form of adult education is essential, and open discussion is the best method of adult education...
...Example is the most telling of influences, and so the spectacle of men openly voicing their grievances...
...His cultural history is a perpetual emphasis upon magnanimity though it is also a catalogue of varied meannesses...
...It is only too probable that the names and motives of the perpetrators will never be known...
...The conception that our people should be formed in one democratic mold by the same set of "nationalizing influences" was MONWEAL 549 i i 9 and misapprehensions for debate ought to prove valuable...
...It should have been understood from the beginning that human beings will insist upon being groups and that the real distinction of democracy lies in its wish that no group be comprised of slaves...
...The sponsors of the idea were merely working in what seems the only practical fashion to spread the habit of sizing up other people fairly...
...The desecration of Catholic graves in Salem reported on the very day that the Massachusetts May Tercentenary began, is a significant omen...
...More important still is acknowledgment of the principle of parity, which means the end of competition, and the elimination, thereby, of one source of friction...
...One need only say that Hawthorne who studied the evil of which his folk are capable would never have imagined such a crime as this...
...It has not even been claimed that one could report, after a conference, that so and so many "cases of intolerance" had been cured...
...Possibly Salem and neighboring towns have been harboring a real grudge, not so much against Catholics as against newly arrived racial groups as yet incapable of adjustment to conditions...
...October 2, x929 THE C O M 9 i i| ii i i reduce her total tonnage from 305,000 to 285,000 tons...
...Nothing is better calculated than such an experience to rivet attention upon what is certainly the most serious and baffling of our cultural problems...
...To prove that Boston is eager to bring about an era when such deeds shall be impossible may well be one reason for calling the Calvert conference...
...and it is still nearly impossible to tell which way the United States is going...
...Almost immediately everybody who had a reason for being different hastened to erect barriers of defense...
...Why not admit the rightness of diversity therefore, and stake out the proper boundaries of individuality...
...Should it ever become possible to enlist ~oo,ooo people in this discussion, the movement for true tolerance in our country will be supported by an intelligent group all the more powerful for not having been specifically organized...
...No doubt one cause of recent forms of clannishness was the bad "tolerance formula" of a generation ago...
...This question, or something like it, has governed the discussion of religious differences held under the auspices of a number of groups...
...But that is no excuse for an attack upon the dead...
Vol. 10 • October 1929 • No. 22
