Communication
May 22, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 75 COMMUNICATIONS A NEW SCHOOL OF CHRISTIAN ARTS Atchison, Kan. TO the Editor:—Dr. Ralph Adams Cram's plea, in the December 19 issue of The Commonweal, for the...
...It, too, has just emerged from the pioneer stage...
...But of all the boys I have met and lived with during the past few years—all normal and average, a few above—one may expect appreciation of literature, as such, and then only an appreciation of sorts, in the ninth grade and above...
...But this movement—if movement it is— consists in a series of detached, isolated groups...
...The Federal Reserve Board not only advanced the call loan rate to 20 percent," etc...
...Moreover, the Church in America has at last and only very recently emerged from the pioneer state...
...Harman, would indicate that the cause of Christian artistic expression is not without ardent and authoritative advocates even in traditionless America...
...That old classical junk," is, I fear, about the sum total of most juvenile responsiveness in that direction...
...THE FEDERAL RESERVE Chestnut Hill, Pa...
...Saint Benedict's is young as Benedictine abbeys go—seventy years...
...Bruner no doubt can prove me entirely wrong with any number of theories...
...In the abbey today all music is strictly Gregorian and daily, from matins until compline, the liturgy with all the solemnity and privileges of the abbatial rank is performed as punctiliously as love and study can effect and conditions permit...
...The dream's material corner-stone is the partially completed Gothic monastery that is being built on the high bluffs overlooking the Missouri...
...Cram mentions, in commercially prosperous America an extensive, concerted and admirable development of certain of the secular arts...
...Is it not true that Catholics are working hand in hand with non-Catholics in this movement...
...When finished the building will form a giant letter E. Only the back and northern arm of the E (containing the cells, calefactories, refectory, kitchens, infirmary, chapter house and novitiate) is to be completed at present...
...Ralph Adams Cram's plea, in the December 19 issue of The Commonweal, for the establishment of a school of Christian arts, and the subsequent communications from Mr...
...and already it numbers 100 members...
...this the beginning—further evidence that there is an awakened appreciation of the importance of ecclesiastical art in America...
...Mitchell, I think, made an awful blunder and for which his directors did reward him by electing a new man for his job...
...Cram's and this one, under the patronage of The Commonweal, inspire both the connoisseurs and the amateurs and even those of us who are less than amateurs, mere admirers, to raise the sooner a shout of "Deus vult" for a modern defense and restoration of a sacred custody...
...Such paper is eligible, running for ninety days or less...
...Alan Drady...
...I can show you any one of twenty-five or thirty youngsters of the above-stated age, whose total lack of response to Mr...
...The church, which will approximate in size the famous Tintern Abbey church, will be the gem of the group...
...When one has learned to accept boys as individuals, containing the seeds of tastes and thoughts and desires that will later grow according to the preparation of the ground...
...Of an interest of already substantial proportions— though as yet unconcerted: springing from innumerable unheralded groups of earnest lovers of Christian art, who, ignorant of the efforts of the other groups, are striving single-handed for the attainment of their vision...
...This fact has occasioned the first public intimation of the true proportions of the dream...
...Eugene J. Morris, Vice-President, Quaker City National Bank...
...Boys cannot be led, guided, driven or understood through such agencies, be the subject literature, athletics, morals or religion...
...The Federal rate (New York) is still at 5 percent to member banks, but this applies only to paper offered by member banks, or paper supported by the United States government paper...
...Within the sheltering abbey walls the artists will gather their inspiration not merely by studying but by living the art of the Church...
...Apage," then, to maxims and...
...Coleridge's singing alliterations might seem appalling, but who are, in spite of that dreadful lack of artistic appreciation, excellent shortstops and outfielders for their age, who can run 100 yards in thirteen seconds or swim the same distance on their backs—not to mention the ability to gain considerable distance by kicking a football, or to take a well-directed boxing glove on the chin with little unseemly crying...
...The school is to be an American institution...
...Right there we parted, for I am convinced that therein those columns erred...
...It has been my privilege during the three years I have been a student at the college conducted by the monks of Saint Benedict's Abbey, Atchison, Kansas, to observe the beginning of the material realization of just such a dream...
...each different, never to be measured, as a class, by adult maxims nor condemned by adult analogies—then, and not until then, has one gained a position from whence one may hope to impart to a boy a little of what is known to be desirable for him...
...The Federal Board's weakness at present is their inability to control funds placed on call by great corporations, which, in order to supplement their profits, lend at call (temporary funds) at the money post in the New York Stock Exchange...
...TO the Editor:—Being a subscriber and a banker, I think it only proper to call your attention to a very deplorable error on page 639, second column, in your issue of April 10, 1929...
...As far as class-rooms are concerned I am not a teacher, nor do I know aught of "ideal pupils...
...Show us the lad of eight who will not respond to a proper recital of 'The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, the furrow followed free...
...Neither the Federal Reserve Board nor the New York Federal have anything to do with the call-loan rate in Wall Street or elsewhere...
...There is no richer, truer source of religious artistic inspiration than active participation in the life of the Church—through contact with a religious community and the daily enactment of the living drama of the liturgy...
...There is need of a clearing-house for the dreams of this American school of the Christian arts in order that the efforts may be concerted and mutual encouragement and assistance accrue...
...The school will be an asylum where monastic discipline and liturgical prayer are not archaeological curiosities but realities...
...morals and analogies about boys, until we are able, through knowledge, to judge the worth of these sayings, and to know whereof we speak...
...This, then, is the dream...
...TO the Editor:—This is to take respectful exception to a statement made in the editorial columns of The Commonweal recently...
...This little community in the very heart of the mundane Middle-West has conceived a stupendous dream—a dream of which the first material expression is just now taking shape...
...And, with the coming of a fuller monastic life, have come the same impulses that stirred the eleventh-century abbeys—the now traditional Benedictine desire for artistic expression, a spirit that must lurk in the solemn tones of the chanted hours...
...LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN Rio Vista, Cal...
...Yet I am convinced that any sort of recital of the above or any other stanza of the Ancient Mariner (that particular piece because the questioned article mentioned it, and for no other reason) will elicit, if anything besides a bored attention or a blank stare, a most surprisingly ungratifying response, from any group of normal boys, eight to twelve years of age...
...we were the first that ever burst into that silent sea,' and we will show you one who is not interested in swimming or baseball...
...The disputed statement is a prime example of the analogies which are trustingly accepted and firmly believed in by most adults—even by most parents, whom experience should have wisened—regarding boys...
...The library and guest wing (the southern arm of the E) and the abbey church (central arm) will be begun as soon as resources permit...
...For there is, as Dr...
...Such analogies are false, in that they do not specify and are erroneously all-embracing...
...We may possibly disagree on just what constitutes a "proper recital" and again on the finer shades of meaning of the word "respond...
...And can the interested reader be censured who asks himself if these gentlemen may not be the unconscious spokesmen of a widespread and gradually increasing American interest in the purely Christian expression of art...
...Surely this is not an impossible conjecture...
...In consideration of this development of artistic appreciation, this increased prosperity, this fuller religious life, is a mighty renaissance in ecclesiastical art improbable...
...Lavanoux and from Mr...
...How uncomfortably do we squirm and how ferociously do we glare down from the lofty summit of adulthood at the normal lad, riding serenely along and tumbling our wise savings about our ears, one after another, as he goes...
...Mitchell in a moment of advertising delirium did offer $25,000,000, but only at 17, 18 and 20 percent, which did not have the effect of lowering the rate to 8 percent...
...I am, you see, in a position where boys are apt to be entirely honest with me...
...This building, of native blue limestone embellished with white Carthage stone, is an eminently correct, though severe, adaptation of perpendicular Gothic...
...In this monastery, whose every stone is reminiscent of the best traditions in ecclesiastical art, these Benedictines hope to 76 THE COMMONWEAL May 22, 1929 develop a school that in time will include all the branches of Christian art—architecture, sculpture, painting, music, the designing and execution of sacred vessels, vestments, etc...
...In reading those columns, the present writer went along, column-inch, after column-inch, article after article, page after page, agreeing or at least not disagreeing with the writer of them, until the very end, where, under the heading, Literature for Children, it was said...
...The call rate, or the demand for demand money, is generally fixed by a group of the largest banks, which are, of course, in very close touch with funds that flow to and from New York...
...The monks are gradually preparing and equipping themselves to assume the work of such a school whenever a favorable time and circumstances and ever-laggard funds shall allow, but the plan at present is to secure a certain number of artists and craftsmen from European abbeys and schools to supervise this school for a period after its formal opening...
...Brendan McCormack...
...May the publication of such dreams as Dr...
Vol. 10 • May 1929 • No. 3
