Communications
June 19, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 187 i= ii j COMMUNICATIONS THE CASE OF MRS. DENNETT a new concern with morality. In every country Catholic edu- Brooklyn, N. Y. cators and leaders have...
...2. Extent of separation an indication of once being a numer- ous, farflung people...
...In a mission centre of such vast proportions, the incoming correspondence is enormous...
...Those desiring further details may find them in a volume published by Father Schmidt in I91o: Die Stellung der Pygmaean-voelker in der Entwicklungsgeschichte der Menschen (Stuttgart...
...Dennett, but he does seem to excuse her...
...Would a Catholic moralist permit a boy or girl to read it...
...May I be permitted to add some information on the subject...
...8anger's verj~ immature views.--The Editors...
...A casual glance at a current number of Anthropos will disclose articles in English, French, Dutch, Spanish and German from many individuals and orders...
...First there came a recognition of two facts- that champions of a "new sex morality" were making capital out of an alleged censorship, and that Catholics ought to oppose this "morality" to the best of their ability...
...Now Father Gusinde had to go to Modling to take Father Schebesta's place on the editorial staff of Anthropos during his absence...
...8anger is not solving the problem but simply kicking up publicity...
...And where he has succeeded, does he deserve stripes or sneers...
...With the advent of trained missionary scientists and the gradual accumulation of data and facts, fruits of long study, direct, tedious, patient activities among these people themselves, of laymen unprejudiced or blinded by preconceived notions, a new school came to life, enunciating this principle: the more primitive a man, the more he has been spared contact with civilization and culture, the more clearly and definitely does he possess an idea of a Supreme Being...
...Lebzelter, curator of the Anthropologic Museum of Vienna, has just returned from two and one-half years among the Bushmen--distant relations of the pigmy...
...This llst does not exhaust the possibility of enumeration among the society itself, 188 THE COMMONWEAL June 19, 1929 nor does it include the many other coworkers and assistants taken from most of the orders and societies working in the foreign missions, nor the imposing list of laymen also active in this work...
...McGoldrick does not speak for the Church...
...Dennett's pamphlet offers another solution, repudiated by a Brooklyn jury...
...Is there...
...And like children their contact with anything new or unknown simply fills them with inexpressible fear, and causes them to fly...
...Bonum ex integra causa...
...McGoldrick has to expose their fallacy...
...We believe their solution is the best...
...Are you like some of the editors who confess they have not read it, but denounce her conviction...
...It is obvious that Monsignor Belford has completely mis-understood the editorial in question...
...Imagine this pamphlet, with its diagrams, in the hands of a group of high school pupils...
...If an average-sized white man would stretch out his arm, the average pigmy man would hardly touch this extended arm with the crown of his head...
...The evolutionary school of ethnology went to extremes and predicated its fundamentals as follows: "The more primitive a man, the more closely will he be akin to animal...
...I am opposed to any tariff increase on sugar, whether pro- duced in Wisconsin or any other state, because of the heavy burden on consumers who will pay $I2.OO for every dollar that gets to weak sugar mills...
...real morals, ethics, altruism, even virtue--the more can he never be called other than Man...
...Have right and wrong, truth and error, equal rights...
...Some are deliberately malicious...
...In view o[ both these seeming truths, we said, remarks like those made by Judge Hayes in the Drelser case are unfortunate...
...If one can persuade an agent or a producer to refrain from an evil act, is he not bound to do so...
...her pam- phlet...
...The New Republic...
...Sanger and her followers...
...It is an altogether different matter to say that Mrs...
...Hence we need feel no surprise that this society today possesses a corps of trained scientists of world renown...
...Father Schmidt and his coworkers are convinced that the most primitive people, the real present-day survivors of the "earliest man" on earth, are the pigmies...
...Then there are the Fathers Koppers and Guslnde, renowned for their investigations of the Fire Islanders, Father Drelchgauer, with an enviable reputation in the solution of Maya inscriptions and Father Schebesta, with his past successes and present attempts...
...Less than 8 percent of all sugar consumed by us is produced by these weak mills and any sugar company in Michigan, Colorado or Wisconsin that employs immature children or convicts proposed in Michigan Press has no proper labor to protect...
...on armchair philosophy...
...There is at least one paragraph in that pamphlet which is indefensible...
...In the meanwhile Father Schumacher, O.Sp.S., is busy among them in the forest depths of Cameroon, Africa (also aided by the Holy Father...
...Nor is the subject of sex morality suf- ficiently simple to permit solution through a few rigid ipse dixits...
...Speaking of the extreme shyness of the pigmies he observed that, if an expedition, say llke Byrd's to the Antarctic, were to reverse its direction and try for the little people, the first sneeze of the first member would be enough to send every pigmy in that county into the next county...
...The sciences mentioned have a peculiar value for direct and indirect application and aid in the missionary activities...
...Our remarks may have sounded like implied criticism of Mrs...
...The women are even smaller...
...Sanger...
...That would imply admit- ting that American Catholics, as a body, are trying to limit the existing rights of free speech wherever they can do so...
...We are, as we have said, profoundly opposed to Mrs...
...I am sure The Com- monweal would not print them...
...They look at you with big, round eyes, childlike, trusting, once they know you...
...McGoldrick but were not intended to be more than an opin-ion that the controversy between her and Mrs...
...Father Schebesta, aided by the Holy Father, spent twenty months in Malakka living with them, talking to them, observing...
...Would you give it to your children...
...Really, your jibe is unkind, if it is not disloyal...
...Others already work here and there, and it is all being centralized in the hands of Father Schmidt--plans, accumulated evidences, new projects...
...You claim that Mrs...
...In every country Catholic edu- Brooklyn, N. Y. cators and leaders have discerned the problem of sex instrucT O the Editor :--In The Case of Mrs...
...Have you read the pamphlet...
...in other words, very, very many are but rash, superficial and illogical conclusions...
...Belford but in the interests of fairness...
...T SEEKING THE LITTLE MEN Chicago, Ill...
...There are letters of routine business but also letters of information, description of the various people, their customs, habits, language, writings, morals, ethics, etc...
...Dennett's pamphlet there are at least three objectionable paragraphs...
...Whom would it soothe...
...We declared that this ought never to have been offered for circulation through the mails, but held that in certain cases it might prove useful...
...H~NR'z RETzsr...
...Father Gusinde, S.V.D., one of the investigators of this group, or related group, spent three and one-half years among them in Tierra del Fuego...
...McGold- rick, in preventing a 8anger address, was acting on behalf of the dmerican Catholic Church...
...Only an individual establishing himself as trustful, possible, will ever see a pigmy--and at that he will spend a long, tedious time until he is rewarded with the opportunity of visiting one of their semi-permanent grass huts...
...REVRESENTATIVE JAMES A. FREAR, Chairman, [r Republican Delegation...
...This society has consistently followed the principle of allowing the better men every opportunity for further study and graduate work in any of the sciences...
...And now as funds are made available from here and there the coworkers and friends of Father Schmidt are actively studying these people, appreciating them the more they know them--above all, returning with the intensest sympathy for these, "the children ancestors of the human race...
...It describes the sexual act...
...REv...
...In order to clarify our stand, we offer the following brief summary of our remarks not in the spirit of replying to Dr...
...3. Their culture, the most primitive, even Pre-Stone Age...
...In Mrs...
...Arrange-ments have been made [or binding Volume IX in leather or cloth...
...Then again objects are sent illustrative of art, of rarity, of life, of style, of weapons, etc...
...4. Their traditions, etc...
...Dennett, (The Commonweal, May 22, 1929) you say: "There is room for legitimate difference of opinion regarding it...
...McGold- tick's work at ~Ibany or elsewhere, which nobody attacked, and in the doing of which she is plainly within her rights...
...8anger from giving an address...
...May the Lord save us from "broad-minded" Catholics ! It is not clear that Dr...
...There is the Reverend William Schmidt, S.V.D., who was selected by the Holy Father as the organizer and, later, director of the permanent Exhibit and Museum of Missionology...
...McGoldrick, we were simply replying to a New Republic editorial criticizing a public state- ment that she had been able to prevent Mrs...
...Even in books intended for children's reading we will find the exponents of this theory attempting descriptions about "glimmering of intelligence," the "dawn of the intellect" making of man but a higher, a civilized animal...
...And they tell us that such a tiny pigmy mother with her still tinier pigmy baby is one of the most sympathetic sights to be seen...
...In your effort to placate the New Republic, you assure that anti-Catholic paper that Mrs...
...malum ex quocumque de[ecru...
...The editor of The Commonweal...
...These will be sent upon request...
...While in Chicago he outlined what is here indicated...
...Keyes defends Mrs...
...Information on binding will be given upon application to the offices o[ The Commonweal...
...Deep in the heart of the immense tropical and sub- tropical forests they have made a last stand against encroach- ing civilization, and there where man's foot has not as yet penetrated, they are to be found: in the Philippines, in Mal- akka, in Central Africa, the Belgian Congo, in some of the unexplored South Sea Islands, in the extreme tip of South America, etc...
...It is possible to compromise truth in an effort to appear broad and liberal...
...That implies no criticism of Mrs...
...The title page and index for Volume IX of The Common- weal are now ready...
...Alone, as an individual is his only chance--and slim at that--yet that is why Father Schebesta goes to the Congo...
...The Holy Father heard--funds were immediately forthcoming...
...But the law deals with facts...
...But they neglect to indicate clearly that this is only a theory...
...Then, you conclude, "It would be soothing to behold both relaxing into quiet meditation...
...Would you have us forever be silent when platforms and papers swell with appeals and arguments for a cause which natural law and sound theology, not to say common decency, condemn ? Is it right to sneer at the one woman whose brains and courage have done so much to nullify the influence of Mrs...
...In the case of Mrs...
...The Catholics of New York...
...Now, again subsidized by the Holy Father, with the aid of other real friends among whom is the Belgian government itself, he has gone to make contact with another fragmentary group in this chain of evidences that is being gathered...
...We may not judge her intentions...
...Is it not true that even one paragraph is enough to condemn a book...
...We have never heard of a moralist who condemned the study of medicine either by those who wished to practise it or by those who needed to acquire knowledge of it for their own lives...
...T THREE-CENT SUGAR Washington, D. C. O the Editor:--I am in receipt of the issue of The Com- monweal for May 29, containing an editorial, Three-Cent Sugar, wherein the writer, after commenting upon my bounty proposal, finds fault because Wisconsin has a law regarding child labor in the beet fields...
...They are real children...
...No doubt, she did not intend to teach immorality...
...Sanger has as much right to present or proclaim her ideas on birth control as Mrs...
...Man, his origin and development, has always been a question of paramount importance...
...What she said is sound Catholic doctrine...
...RT...
...June 19, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 187 i= ii j COMMUNICATIONS THE CASE OF MRS...
...Too many such conclusions are based on incomplete, hasty investigations...
...It is the first I knew of it, nor is it at all material...
...O the Editor :--The Commonweal, Number 17, Volume IX, page 478, carried a remark about Father Schebesta leaving for the Belgian Congo for an intensive study of the pigmies living in that region...
...It is only a question of time before they will be gone entirely...
...Surely you do not mean legitimate...
...on the confusion of the primitive with the degenerate...
...Father Schmidt is also the founder of Anthropos, a magazine that culls, evaluates and publishes the results achieved in the fields of anthropology, ethnology and philology...
...Therefore Father Schmidt issued an appeal to the world for the protection and intensive study of this little people, for with their passing will go all possibility of our ever knowing about our own origin...
...But she does speak with the Church...
...JOHN L. BI~LFORD...
...The anthropologic, ethnologic and philologic value of all this has not been overlooked...
...They are unfortu- nate because there is room not for a "new morality" but for tion...
...The reason for this assumption can only be roughly indicated: I. Fragmentary, probably related groups found far away from one another...
...McGoldrick never claimed to speak [or the Church...
...Two volumes are the results of this expedition...
...To draw comparisons between state laws as a smoke screen is only to justify indi- rectly what any impartial study will disclose is an indefensible 4o percent increase in the sugar tariff...
...Perhaps you mean legal...
Vol. 10 • June 1929 • No. 7
