Law and Law Enforcement

...Tu autem Domine miserere nostri," says the Sister Reader...

...For any law enacted by a theoretical 51 to 49 vote 586 THE COMMONWEAL October 9, x929 exists by a margin too narrow to prove permanently binding in practice upon a minority which holds the strictures of that law objectionable and as such tyrannical...

...Several states have sought to stop the rising tide of lawlessness by legislation providing life terms for repeated convictions...

...This we accept as an axiom requiring no proof...

...Who knows but that the commission, instead of hatching new schemes of more effective enforcement, may offer suggestions for saving from the stigma of the criminal thousands who at present become offenders of the law in a technical but not in a moral sense ? As matters stand now, a minority objecting to the provisions of an offensive law whose amendment or October 9, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 587 repeal it cannot secure has but two alternatives, supine submission or nullification...

...Anehusa--h'm, let me see---well, I can do without the small one, but I must have the big Dropmore one...

...While this threat brought home to the Georgians the advisability of a more accommodating attitude, the conflict was settled not by threats but by the tactful reconsideration and emendation of the tariff bill before its passage by Congress...

...Experience has taught us that under a system of simple majority vote, harmony between doctrinary fiat and empirical reality never lasts long...

...Aretotis--I have seed of the white ones from my own plants last year, but here is a new kind--all colors, with black centre--at a terribly stiff price1 But Aretotis does so well in our garden, and looks so well on the altar--and a colored one, with black centre l So it goes down the list, heartbreakingiy...

...There were people who did not want independence, and states which did not approve of the kind of union offered...

...Much room for improvement remains, of course, but unintelligent zeal will not hasten the coming of a better day...

...Now it remains for us to see to it that modern culture is first of all further suffused with a Catholic outlook...

...Not that all was harmony under this doctrinary assumption of the popular will...

...If Ryder's holds forth on the beauty of a new blue cineraria, what can I do but gape and sigh, and mark it down on my list ? If Burpee's elaborates on a blood-red zinnia with twisted petals--I must have it, that is all...

...I recopy the mutilated list, and take it up to Reverend Mother...

...but that there is nothing~particularly sacrosanct about the specific tenets of a particular law...

...Simply the realization that the idea of the sanctity of the law applies to the concept of the law, i. e., to the generally assumed right of organized society to regulate the conduct of its members in their relation to each other...

...So I go over my lists and cross out the things I feel that I can live without...

...It is not a problem of the improvement of the judicial machinery but of the fitness and enforceability of the law itself...

...To be sure, there are grave defects in the administration of justice...

...The rendition of these works has been impossible, however, if only for extrinsic reasons...

...These defects are responsible for the crowding of court dockets, a situation which leads to paralyzing delays in the punishment of crime...

...But some innate quality in my simplicity leads me to accept likewise descriptions in seed catalogues, and I swallow them all whole, blissfully and trustfully...

...I say nothing--no, not one word do I say...

...In fact it should not, lest popular government become a farce...

...For these shortcomings the President's commission of experts should be able to discover effective remedy...

...Despite their precaution, we have so far nineteen amendments without one instance of a formal repeal...

...Will the commission of experts save the country from an impasse greater than any since that which led to the Civil War, by a report declaring unenforceable all law opposed as this legislation is...

...But political organization must also reckon with the possibility that submission may not be the rule, and that enforcement may mean civil war...

...Their reason was that the ordinary method of legislation would make it too easy to meddle with the fundamental law of the land and would thus endanger the very union which that law was to guarantee...

...Thus one sees that the field of instrumental church music is also able to bring forth good fruit, if only it be granted enough light and the right care...

...Where russet /eaves are blown never to return ; Where sighs of the golden poplars are held Breathless and alone-Thither, entwined with the mystic weave of night, Have my sorrows flown...

...The fact of the winning of independence and the establishment of union was taken to imply that independence and union signified the will of the group...

...Of course, nullificaton as a welbestablished Anglo-American institution has an excellent pedigree...

...Let no one object that I am viewing the problem from the special point of view of an aesthete...

...Cost, $x6.82...

...At a time when the soil in which cultural values of the highest sort can grow is steadily being curtailed, people must reflect twice before they decide to give up something preciously cultural...

...But the issue of law and law enforcement as here considered is a far deeper one and far more difficult of cure...

...For ordinary affairs the popular and representative vote with simple majority, for constitutional amendments the representative vote with two-thirds and three-fourths majority respectively were finally established...

...In the end it was not theoretical reasoning but considerations of a very practical kind which prompted the dissenters to abide by the decision of the Revolution and the non-conformist states to join the union as it was...

...Side by side with great art, much workaday music, pleasurable from a religious as well as an aesthetic point of view, has been written: the Masses of Pembaur and Filke, or (to quote newer and still more impressive names) the Masses of Karl Senn, Otto Jochum or Joseph Messmer, the priest-composer who is the most venturesome of the group...

...But when we examine the new church music, both vocal and instrumental, we cannot find it guilty, as a whole, of offense...

...And shuddering over the wiggly worms as I do so, and smelling the brown earth fresh and grateful to God for the cool and spreading sweetness of rain ? And knowing that every tiny plant will stand sturdily on its feet and thrive lustily, having got its start in life under such circumstances ? Then, there is the watching for the first blossom on a new variety...

...I don't know, and most likely theology is dead against me, but I am sure I have a number of them...

...Reduced at last, to fifty items...

...Here the fathers of the constitution have provided not only a dual process of enactment, but also a two-thirds and three-fourths majority respectively for the two procedures...

...However, under the fundamental law of the new union, a formal procedure for the future determination of the popular will was decided upon...

...For when violations of any law reach the extent of those against the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, real enforcement would result in the imprisonment not of thousands but of millions of otherwise respectable citizens...

...Sycophantism, i. e., betraying one's neighbor, was one of the symptoms of decay of once glorious Greece...

...Holy Church teaches that it is a grievous wrong wilfully to disbelieve statements contained in Holy Writ, and never had I any impulse to think them otherwise than Gospel truth...

...In fact, we seem to be in the midst of such an experience right now...

...To enforce this legislation in the face of the demonstrated numerical and qualitative opposition is not an act of statesmanship and patriotism, but of narrow politics and zealotry...

...Ample proof of this we have in the fate of the Fourteenth, the Fifteenth and the Eighteenth Amendments...

...October 9, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 585 only as typical instances of unecclesiastical church music (Klose's own term...

...They begin with seed catalogues...

...But, my dear child, she says--where will you ever put fifty kinds of flowers...

...No formal effort had been made to ascertain in advance what proportion of the people was in favor or opposed to the political changes contemplated...

...It will merely uproot an old tradition, admittedly less good but certainly not intrinsically corrupt, which is probably more firmly rooted in Germany than it is in the United States...

...Then the Church will no longer need to abandon modern art to its fate, but will be able to receive it unhesitatingly into its service...

...In some of the larger cities, evasion of law and failure of enforcement have reached a state of veritable anarchy...

...But what is left of the sanctity of the law when technical violations are so universal that enforcement becomes a failure...

...It is indicative of political courage, but such courage is worthy of a better cause...

...That we have learned from bitter experience...

...The present temper of both proponents and opponents of the existing prohibition laws being what it is, there is no hope of a modification acceptable to both...

...That is a severe necessity, and Reverend Mother, seeing my great need, nods and smiles indulgently on my follies and indiscretions...

...Not that all these amendments are obeyed and enforced...

...All during breakfast, while the venerable rule of Saint Augustine is being read aloud, I am nursing the profane intention of slipping out immediately--oh, sooner than immediately, if possible--to see what progress that scabiouse bud has made during the night...

...IN A CONVENT GARDEN By A MARYKNOLL SISTER ESIDES converting heathen and studying two languages and taking care of rabbits, I am the gardener for our house...

...At last it is reduced by about half...

...The President, we are informed, will ask Congress for $5,ooo,ooo for the immediate construction of new prisons and $Io,ooo,ooo for other prisons to be built after a short interval...

...It is not a question of securing more convictions but of reducing the number of criminals...

...Thither Are My Sorrows The sparrows are again flying with the north wind, While summer is done with its wasteful laughter-And the silver sound of my youth's offering, I hear it glide along unto the vale of the unknown...

...The wings of music could not, we shall admit, beat strongly in a world estranged...

...The enactment of a law by a simple majority vote implies per se its eventual repeal or amendment, since in each voting contest the party defeated yields to the majority only until it, in turn, will be able to cast a majority vote...

...Boil down that list to a dozen or so, and then send it...

...Thus my list grows, and grows, and grows...

...And because, for reasons of principle, I am aware of the cultural influence of all music, I do not fail to realize the truth that the Church must, without taking thought of the practical consequences, boldly place the ban upon music which it cannot reconcile with its own spirit...

...Other weaknesses in the judicial system enable unscrupulous legal talent to save the guilty from punishment altogether...

...LAW AND LAW ENFORCEMENT By JOHANNES MATTERN HE signers of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the constitution clearly demonstrated their acceptance of what we call the popular will" as the law of the group...

...If only those charged with the execution of this mandate will abstain from an "immoderate use" of the negative aspects of this declaration l Much has been improved during the past twenty-five years, and it would seem (may God be praisedl) that the time has gone forever when a Eucharistic procession could march to the cadence of operatic potpourri blown vigorously by a brass band...

...Let our lawmakers beware lest they legislate our fair land to destruction...

...But why ask for more money for more prisons before the commission of experts has made its report...

...Now, every gardener must have a garden...

...Only the prevention of personal injury can possibly justify such tactics...

...I have been concerned throughout with the spiritual nucleus of church music, and not at all with its aesthetic content...

...At last, scanning the closely written sheets of paper, I count the items, and find that I have just 253 kinds of flowers marked down, to say nothing of vegetables...

...But matters are not quite so easy of adjustment in the case of contested legislation enacted as constitutional law, either as part of the original constitution or as an amendment thereto...

...Then, in an excess of cruelty, I go over the list again, dosing my eyes, and ruthlessly drawing my pencil through this one and that one and yet another one...

...The premise from which we have to start in the consideration of the fitness of a legislative act and its enforceability is not the sanctity of the law but the fact that man-made law constitutes at best only a modus vivendi signifying the prevalence of the opinion or will of one section of the group over that of another...

...In general there is evident a universal failure to find ways and means to curb the growing disregard of law without inflicting undue individual suffering...

...This has led to such revolting severity in the sentencing of offenders that in at least one state public opinion has forced remedial action by legislative amendment...

...I shall die without it...

...When the people of Georgia refused to accept the Clay tariff bill of I832, enacted in the face of their opposition ably expressed by Calhoun, the federal government went so far as to threaten the nullifiers with war...

...It will nullify the law...

...And guiltily conscious in my heart of hearts that I scarcely have room for a dozen in my tiny plot, I reduce it to fifteen (including the colored Aretotis...

...Recently one United States District Attorney, Amos Woodcock, has unearthed an old law which makes it obligatory for neighbor to inform against neighbor...

...After all, as an extra-legal procedure, nullification is not without serious consequences for the political integrity of the group...

...Nullification of bad law breeds the habit of disrespect for all law, and disrespect for all law presages the end of political organization for the preservation of which we make law...

...I shall never dare to show such a list to Reverend Mother...

...A minority considering itself living under a popular government will not permanently accept even a constitutional amendment which is contrary to its conviction and offensive to its conscience...

...If not, conscientious parents must view with grave apprehension the future of the country in which their children and children's children are expected to find their earthly happiness...

...She will never know till the great day that my original list numbered 253...

...But ordering seeds is only one predominating passion...

...The program adopted by the important group of contemporary French composers, cited in my previous paper, reads: "Simplicity of form, the suppression of chromatic harmony in favor of a diatonic harmony, the purging of emphasis and of all romanticism...

...How can one have more than one predominating passion...

...And it is certain that if modern and instrumental music were excluded from the house of God, the destruction of all its latent religious energies would follow, inducing as a consequence the sterilization, with the exception of just a few germs, of what is now in a process of growth...

...Our federal penitentiaries are crowded to suffocation...

...M. DE GRACIA CONCEPCION...

...The deposition of Pope Plus XI on church musii: (December 20, 1928 ) has not rendered the development of instrumental music impossible in the future, even as Pius X had not legislated against it...

...How about transplanting tender little things in a fine mist of rain...

...Anybody who was thinking merely of aesthetic effects would emphasize the fact that even today chant and ancient polyphony are notably remote from the people...

...The remedy for such a situation is to be found not in theoretical and doctrinary preachments, but in realistic thinking and practical action...

...Can an art in which the old spirit so manifestly stirs even in our time have become crassly anti-spiritual during three centuries...

...A nation habitually flouting the obligations of its formal law, or enforcing objectionable law upon an unwilling minority without regard for sensibilities and consequences, will slowly but surely descend to that point of disintegration where it will cease to be a political unit fit to maintain itself against its more self-respecting neighbors...

...The Holy Father merely emphasized anew the Church's preference for vocal music and warned against too indulgent a use (immoderatiorem usum) of instruments...

...Riot after riot testifies to the fact that the danger point has been reached in housing that part of our criminal population which has actually been brought to the state of hearing sentence pronounced...

...And my garden space is about the size of the front porch where my mother used to sit and gossip over her crocheting...

...I have ordered blue flowers by the dozen, only to have them turn out a deadly purple or a sickly lavender...

...Nor will the responsibility for its eventual degradation rest entirely or even primarily upon those who refuse to obey objectionable law...

...An equal share of blame attaches to the majority which, in the face of the sincere and persistent opposition of a formidable minority, refuses to consider a reasonable modification of the law in question...

...To be sure, the very idea of political organization presupposes submission to and enforcement of prevailing law...

...If it cannot change the law, it will disobey its mandates or inhibitions...

...for the contacts existing between these forms and modern music are as yet restricted to the highest reaches of art music...