Communications
October 16, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 617 Every time you tell the truth about one of these "charming" comedies, you find a dozen angry persons who call you a prude or deplore your lack of...
...Of all the observable facts in psychology (whether classic or modern) this one admits of about as little discussion as any...
...It was dearly explained to the masses in this country that Mexico was but striking the blow which would eventually liberate her from the bondage of Rome...
...A dishonest statement repeated often enough is sure to find believers in the end --and so the work of destruction by attrition goes on...
...Christianity had done nothing for the peons---only to send shepherds to shear the sheep, even when the fleece was light...
...The schedule is as follows :-Introductory Professor Edward Oct...
...Five years ago Sefior Gamio wrote an article for the Survey, a r&um6 of observations made by himself and his coadjutors as servants and savants of the Mexican government...
...And they got their story before the public while the iron was hot...
...And, needless to say, they are sitting in perpetual judgment on the thoughts, words and deeds of their Catholic fellow-citizens...
...But, while we were quietness itself on the Mexican situation (from a false sense of propriety) our non-Catholic brethren were extremely loquacious about the matter...
...1 Drama Yale University...
...Sefior Gamio was anti-Catholic to the core: the Mexican peons were no better off before statues of the saints than were their ancestors worshiping Aztec deities...
...A lavish scenic display, music of a fair order for this type of review, a generous dosage of off-color material and a few numbers of merit...
...I4 Literature Mar...
...To quote Mr...
...And the press of this country, largely supported by Catholics in our metropolitan centres, treated us as though we were not...
...arre [rt eA Series of Lectures The tremendous influence of religion on arts and letters is a fact which now is being recognized as one of the most hopeful trends of the age...
...Plays that cater to this irresponsibility through the dramatic fiction that everything always turns out well are simply dishonest and hypocritical...
...Subscription for Course, ~25.00 Application may be made to The Director of the Pius X School of Liturgical Music, Telephone Cathedral 1334-or to The Commonweal, Suite 4622, Grand Central Terminal, New York City, Telephone Murray Hill 8581...
...At Maxine Elliott's Theatre...
...George Ighite' s Scandals HE tenth birthday of George White's Scandals finds the mixture much the same as ever...
...Soskin's enthusiasm...
...But that does not alter the fact that they are poisons, and that if the doses are repeated often enough they will bring if not a final catastrophe at least a definite injury...
...in some cases preliminary work consequent to the formation of foreign legions was done...
...That remnants of pagan practices survive is small wonder...
...Deadly poisons can be taken in such minute doses that for a time they seem to have no harmful effect...
...25 Kennard Rand, Harvard University...
...28 Liturgical Mrs...
...Moreover, the precise reason, in a given instance, for our apologetic tone and behavior is usually a little beyond our mental purview...
...At the Apollo Theatre...
...It is a curious, but perfectly obvious, fact that ideas tend to realize themselves in action...
...They are a product of one extreme of the time, just as A Hundred Years Old and Many Waters and Sweet Adeline reflect the reaction setting in at the other extreme...
...The general irresponsibility of our present age is largly due to immaturity of observation...
...The best you can say is that the Scandals do not sail under false colors and are quite frankly vulgar...
...They did not stop to consider whether or not their actions would be considered as un-American...
...Soskin introduces Miss Brenner as a dyed-in-the-wool Mexican, born in Aguascalientes...
...Since the capacity of the hall is limited to approximately 4oo seats early application for tickets is advisable...
...While this persecution was in full swing, Catholics as a body in this country, with a few notable exceptions (and even these exceptions were duly apologized for and explained away) dared not make any outward demonstration of their inward feelings in the matter...
...Contrast with all this the recent reactions of the Jews when news reached this country that their coreligionists were being persecuted in far-off lands...
...American Catholics dared not raise their voices, while in far-off Europe public mass meetings were held to protest against the inhuman and unnatural acts of the Calhs r6gime...
...Justine B. Ward Apr...
...What are we going to do...
...Perhaps our crowning achievement in the field of seIf-effacement or debasement was our calm and unperturbed attitude during the recent Mexican persecution...
...I say this as advance notice of a much lengthier rer next week, in which, I hope, there will be a chance to show the turn of the times in the modern theatre and the response to it by modern audiences...
...Architecture Ralph Adams Cram Jan...
...JaM~s F. DESMON...
...who now and then speak out of turn, as it were...
...Its basic idea is wrong...
...They pursue the even tenor of their ways----aping and imitating and following--instead of originating and molding public opinion...
...Well, we do not, of course, need to meet our non-Catholic friends with clenched fists every morning...
...The snake dance of the Pueblo Indians was not devised for tourists...
...The field surveyed was the "picturesque valley of Teotihuacan...
...Would we allow Rome to run our government...
...We Catholics have tried the noble experiment of self-effacement or self-debasement for a sufficiently long period of time...
...Undoubtedly we were afraid that our IOO-percent Americanism might be questioned, or challenged, by our non-Catholic friends...
...But we might, from now on, with beneficial results, ignore the "court of last appeal" which is perpetually sitting in judgment on our every act...
...In this way we may eventually regain our lost independence of action--our freedom...
...But what we can do now and then is to think and act as though this court were in recess occasionally...
...20 Catholic Club, Yale University...
...The deductions arrived at were sweeping, it was a social and ethical map of Mexico---as if a surveyor of the swamps of Montezuma made a blue-prlnt of New York...
...O the Editor :--To assert that the Catholic population of this country is a wofully insignificant factor in the political and social life of this country, is to state a truism---mosscovered with age...
...Was it not a perfectly natural thing in this enlightened age...
...Naturally no person with common sense would say that this or that single play is going to drive adults from the theatre bent upon a life of intrigue and illicit amours...
...Soskin claims is a national feast, loses its harm on All Souls Day...
...Soskin: "Through the tribal beginnings of the Mexican Indian tribes, through the evolution of their primitive and aesthetically sound civilization, through the futile attempts of the Spanish and of the Church to bury an instinctive religion and art of this people beneath an avalanche of Europeanism and foreign ritualism, Miss Brenner makes her way deafly, lucidly and with a revelatory intelligence...
...Probably the most marked characteristic of this unfortunate complex is the defensive attitude which we are eternally assuming-ready at the slightest provocation to apologize when apologies are certainly not in order...
...Parades were held and thronged halls were addressed by prominent Jews...
...Wherever they resided in this country protest meetings were hastily organized, public subscriptions opened...
...28 Sacred Rev...
...The ignorance regarding "mediaevalism" which prevailed until recently is now being dispelled...
...Mention of Sefior Gamio lets the cat out of the bag...
...If the "court" was sitting in judgment on the recent acts of the Jews, it is, in all probability, standing by this time...
...This, perhaps, makes a few side remarks on the matter of ideas in plays fall apropos...
...6 Chaplain Dec...
...The mere repetition of this bald truth, however, disturbs the philosophical composure and mental selfcomplacency of many of our "foremost laymen," whose "broadmindedness" is of such a queer admixture that their intellectual expansiveness simply cannot tolerate their rebellious brethren (impertinent atoms...
...Many Waters HIS play, which comes to us after a long and successful run in London, is one of the most enthralling bits of modern romanticism of many seasons...
...Cornelius Clifford Mar...
...14 Painting Feb...
...The bloody pageantry of Mexico, the rich...
...This bit of background is necessary to appraise Miss Brenner's book, and Mr...
...The point is not the degree to which a given presentation of an idea is destructive, but the simple fact that it is destructive...
...The element of dishonesty also enters in when we come to appraising this particular type of light comedymagain without reference to degree...
...11 Music Apr...
...The last presidential election proved, if it proved anything, that this noble experiment is a dismal failure...
...31 Sacred Bancel La Farge Feb...
...Broadly speaking, then, a play which suggests through the personal charm of its characters, through its superficially amusing situations and through the easy and happy solution of all its situations that moral laxity is a convenient and delightful mode of life exerts a destructive tendency...
...Liturgical Professor Karl Young, Nov...
...IDOLS BEHIND ALTARS New York, N. Y. O the Editor :--This new book on Mexico by Anita Brenner gets fulsome praise from William Soskin reviewing it in the New York Evening Post (September x9...
...And the dignified, imperturbable manner in which it persisted in dealing out these colored news items was not the least exasperating part of the episode...
...There are highbrows in New York who believe in transmigration of souls...
...early education in a San Antonio convent, higher studies in the National University under the direction of Manuel Gamio, "a noted Mexican anthropologist...
...The Holiday of Death (death never takes a holiday) which Mr...
...It was all so simple --merely another link in the evolutionary chain of democracies...
...T. Lawrason Riggs, Dec...
...25 The Lectures will be given at the Plus X Hall, I3oth Street and Convent Avenue on the dates mentioned above at 4.oo P.M...
...October 16, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 617 Every time you tell the truth about one of these "charming" comedies, you find a dozen angry persons who call you a prude or deplore your lack of sophistication...
...The Pius X School of Liturgical Music in consequence of its recognition of this need, announces a course of public lectures on the History of Sacred Art...
...There is a demand for a comprehensive treatment of the sisterhood that existed, and stiU exists, between religion, arts, and letters...
...May the subways speed their splrits...
...That Catholics in general, for some unknown reason, seem to be unmistakably a~icted with what is popularly known as an inferiority complex scarcely seems a debatable point...
...COMMUNICATIONS AGGRESSIVE DEFENSE AGAIN Reading, Mass...
...Certainly not...
...Who knows but that, if they became conscious of the fact that they were being ignored, they might not take themselves so seriously...
...15 Rubrics Rev...
...Like the good nurse attending Dombey's new offspring, we do not presume to state facts as truths, "but merely offer them as mild suggestions...
...True, we can't prevent them from thus sitting...
...We do not take the trouble to trace the links between cause and effect, between light-hearted defiance of natural laws and the tragic results in broken families, neurotic children and increasing mental disease...
...At the Empire Theatre...
...It colored, twisted, distorted and suppressed the really vital 618 THE COMMONWEAL October x6, I92 9 facts of the situation, at will...
...Whether we take the epidemics of certain types of suicides or murders, or whether we look into broader fields of intimate human behavior, we invariably find that an idea, if suggested under proper conditions of attention on the listener's part, produces at least a tendency toward corresponding action, especially if it is made to appear pleasant and easy of fulfilment and without unpleasant consequences...
...17 Jan...
...The new knowledge concerning this subject, once confined to specialists, is now being made accessible to the cultured public...
...And if and when our "mild suggestions" are unceremoniously brushed aside, as is usually the case, we retire again into our shells seriously debating the wisdom of our impertinence...
...Of course...
...For, like it or not, in most instances, American non-Catholics constitute the court of last appeal in our judgment on such matters...
Vol. 10 • October 1929 • No. 24
