Communications
July3, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 257 There seems to be reasonable hope for the success of the new bill. The Buddhists will, on the whole, give it their wholehearted support, although some individual...
...REV...
...O the Editor :--Having read your editorial comments in the issue of March I3 on the course of lectures being given by the Paulist Fathers in New York City, I thought a word on our similar efforts here in the Middle-West might be of some interest...
...Turning to England and to Henry's wrathful career, one wishes for less information about that egoist's matrimonial vicissitudes and for more information about the politics which changed the history of England and the world...
...Mencken does not matter, notwithstanding an occasional "community of interest between Catholicism and himself...
...The boys read for a day or two and were disappointed...
...Such an arrangement, it is pointed out, would put the Governor practically in the position of a Pope...
...A couple of students asked me some days ago if they might sum up Dr...
...Mr...
...I respectfully submit that it is high time to bring this controversy down to first principles...
...Lso R. WARD, C.S.C...
...I hope to get as near to solving the big problem of life and death as the best thinking and the best modern discovery wilt take us...
...MENCKEN ONCE MORE Oyster Bay, L. I. T O the Editor :--In your issue of June 5, Louise Carey Rossett most unjustly attacks you for saying a few deserved good words of H. L. Mencken...
...A reader will remember his moving picture of the last moments of Catherine of Aragon, who, writing to the king, "in a fugue of pride, brave, desolate and magnificent, signed herself for the last time: 'Katherine, Queene of England.' " And a reader...
...She further attempts analogy between the latter and the Action Fran~aise...
...Catholics are convinced that it should never have come at all--except, of course, within the Church, where it undoubtedly was overdue...
...WITTER BYNNER...
...Hackett touches controversial points and, not unlike the professional his- toriansuand others--has his own opinions...
...but other authors have done wilder things with equally unpromising material...
...I am well aware that assertions and counter- assertions are often made at random for both secularism and orthodoxy, and I note with Dom Walsh that prejudice may be on either side or on both, and that it is hard to put off even those ways of thinking found to be wrong...
...Their names provide his sectional headings and their relations to the king lend piquancy to the story, accounting for its popularity with readers who would otherwise scarcely trouble to acquaint themselves with the author's limpid style, his psychological in- sight and his human sympathy...
...The author's attitude toward the continental religious revolt is a little too laudatory and there- fore a little too naive...
...It is called The Background and is in reality an excellent intro- duction which the author's desire to exploit the sensational betrayed him into putting at the end of the bookuwith an apology in the foreword for including it at all...
...To be sure, Henry's mistresses and personally selected wives were of such varied types that they could not all have resembled his mother, and Henry's nerves, temper, brutality, mendacity and other vagaries could scarcely be ascribed to sex repressions...
...But there are many unthinking thinkers, and my chief interest was in the attitude and method of Dr...
...In other words, he seems to have the scholarly, scientific spirit which the new institute of mediaeval studies at Saint Michael's, Toronto, promises is to mark its endeavors--the spirit of "humility, honesty and careful work...
...This shows, at all events, that the government was eager to please all of the parties involved...
...But I am surprised at Dr...
...To a Disappointed Pilgrim You had nowhere to rest your discontented heart, Loving that heart too well to set it free...
...Besides, he feels a mental hunger, which is a disposition that we must find or beget in ourselves and others if we are to seek and digest strong mental food...
...This article provides that the Minister of Education may, when-ever it is necessary for the promotion of public inter- est, undertake to maintain order among organizations of different religions...
...Fosdick once declared it came too soon...
...LESTER W. SEEMAN...
...With due reservations, the Catholic believes in both, plus Revelation...
...This (I think) is something that we religlonists and irreligionists have often to learn over again...
...He believes the Reformation was long overdue...
...July3, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 257 There seems to be reasonable hope for the success of the new bill...
...This is true...
...This is not like science, which proceeds an inch at a time, and makes its claims with care and great caution...
...Nevertheless, in spite of this personal and domestic emphasis, Mr...
...ELIZABETH S. KITE...
...Other points objected to are the qualifica-tions of religious workers and the requirement for religious bodies to report their basic doctrines and the structure of their organizations to the Minister of Education...
...It is to be put down as an improvement that the Church may, according to both the old and the new bill, incorporate as a moral person...
...it was a live topic, and I only requested them to 258 THE COMMONWEAL July 3, 1929 get the meat of his arguments, any "evidence" he might pre- sent...
...Barnes's views for a week's work...
...W HEN a period of history teems with accessible facts, as does the reign of Henry VIII, an author faces the serious problem of selection...
...he sifts the evidence in a small part of this big field, and I think his willingness to look for and at the evidence, and to be guided by it, and to wait for more--in a word, to be open-minded--is as striking as the pertinent facts and theories which he cites...
...If, by any chance, she could care for a more detailed treatment of the subject she will find it in the epilogue of my little book on The Inquisition...
...This appearance of similarity of interest, based as it is on ideals differing as night from day, as good from evil, when stressed by The Commonweal carries with it a sense of confusion of issues...
...Most of those attending purchase copies of the Calvert Series for themselves...
...I name them...
...I say "illuminating" because the connection between the crude, though virile, "200- percent-Amerlcan" type of the latter's intellect, and the subtle nihilistic philosophy of the lately-condemned Action Frangaise, had quite escaped me...
...One must also acknowledge the fact that the government has represented at least two Christian denominations in the special research commission for the revising of the old bill...
...BOOKS His Amorous Highness Henry the Eighth, by Francis Hackett...
...At the suggestion of the bishop of La Crosse, the Right Reverend A. J. McGavick, a series of talks was begun last fall, based upon the Calvert Series of books...
...These are the dogmas...
...Barnes's sureness--he is "rather too apodictic about the security of his position...
...This introductory background gives an account of Europe in the sixteenth century not vastly different from that to be found in the texts of professional historians, though much more smartly put and with those occasional lapses into exag- geration likely to be found in very clever writing...
...You faced a mountain range holding a lake ; But in all the great homes of cloud you had nowhere to go...
...Surely your correspondent must know that Catholic ethics are enlargement of the noble pagan foundations of Aristotle, whereas it is the melancholy fact that the ethics of Bible Christians seem to be falling to the level of irrational taboos...
...O the Editor :--You say that Dora Walsh in his excellent little study, Professor Barnes and Secularism, "examines some of the evidence underlying the discussion" of the science- religion problem...
...The result has been an increasing conviction that for the clientele of The Commonweal the opinion of Mr...
...The Protestants also find less fault with the new bill than with the old draft...
...the second is now being conducted by the diocesan chancelor on The Catholic Church and Science...
...3.00...
...It is so much more effective and Christian than abuse and assertion...
...His picture of the cynical, personal and dynastic politics of sixteenth-century Europe is sketched with a surer hand...
...The Presbyterians declare that the law in-creases the opportunities for the governors to abuse their power...
...The Buddhists will, on the whole, give it their wholehearted support, although some individual members may disagree...
...Barnes has not presented evidence...
...Therefore it is necessary that pagans and Catholics should ally themselves to resist the increasing tyranny of the Bible Christian...
...Menck- en's recent attack upon Protestantism...
...He seems to say: "I am in search of solutions...
...I read, implicit in his writings: "I do not wish to learn, and the reason is that I do not need to learn...
...And we trust that this step will aid us materially in realizing within this community the very apropos motto of Aquinas, "Fides et Scientia...
...HOFFMAN NICKERSON...
...The Catholics also apprehend that Article 8 may possibly lead to unjustified governmental interference, but we have nothing to fear concerning the require-ments for religious teachers or the obligation of re-porting the bases of our organization, because all Catholic religious teachers are highly educated and sectarianism is out of question in the Catholic Church...
...New York: Horace Liveright...
...Yet the Presbyterian Church considers Article 8 as an interference in the self-government of religious organizations...
...Nevertheless, it remains to be deplored that in this present story of Henry's reign, the author has usually allowed the court to eclipse the people, personalities to dwarf ideas and the evanescent to obscure the permanent...
...The individual Protestant or Bible Christian believes in neither, but interprets Revelation after a fashion hostile to both...
...Father Tsuchihashi, S.J., of the Catholic University, Tokio, and Bishop Kogoro Uzaki of the Methodist Church, were members of this commission...
...There are passages of eloquence and insight in the author's portrayal of the six women whose lives were most closely linked with Henry's...
...T PROFESSOR BARNES AND SECULARISM Notre Dame, Ind...
...COMMUNICATIONS MR...
...T La Crosse, Wis...
...The first, given by the reverend principal dealt with The Catholic Church and the Bible, and continued for some eight weeks...
...he believes in human instincts and in the human reason...
...As an undergraduate says of him, he seems to have shut himself up in a bag...
...To obviate any misunderstandings it was made clear at the outset that these courses in apologetics are not intended to take the place of the instructions required by diocesan law before any prospective convert can consider entering the Church...
...Articles 6 and 7 are also ob-jected to, because they invest the local authorities with power to supervise the affairs of religious organiza-tions...
...I do not know all the sciences, but I am willing to be taught...
...REv...
...There are ninety enrolled in the classes, including a number of very keenly interested non- Catholics...
...T Washington, D. C. O the Editor :--As one who profits by constant reading of The Commonweal, permit me to congratulate you for publishing, in your current issue, the illuminating communica-tion of Louise Carey Rossett, re your editorial on Mr...
...Hackett does not regale us with any prolonged psychoanalysis in the orthodox Freudian manner...
...A careful reader should turn at once to the last section...
...Dom Walsh keeps what is known distinct from what is merely supposed...
...I know...
...You came with suitcase and with manuscripts And spread your luggage in a spacious room And leaned on a railing over a pepper-tree, Over cornstalks and banana plants taller than yourself...
...Instinctively all along, I have shrunk from the grossness and crudity of the American Mercury as from something evil, only occasionally glancing down its columns in order to assure my- self that prejudice was not warping my judgment...
...Mencken is, I suppose, a pagan...
...Hackett puts his emphasis on Henry's wives...
...The difficulties and necessary limitations of co6peratlon between those of different faiths are obvious enough...
...If the bill should be passed Buddhism could no longer complain of not being treated on an equal footing with other beliefs...
...It is for you to believe them...
...As it is, they probably skip those parts in the narrative which contain striking historical syntheses...
...In this book of nearly four hundred fifty closely printed pages, they have too many opportunities to feast upon the spice...
...Barnes and Dom Walsh...
...Speaking in general, it is highly desirable that the relations between the state and the Church be regu-lated by definite law, and for this reason the new bill is to be welcomed as a fairly good solution of this delicate problem...
...True, the ninety or so whom we instruct directly are not many, but we feel that even ninety twentieth-century apostles can do a very great deal toward correcting the many false impressions which each of them may find within his own circle of acquaintance...
...Certainly they might...
...In such a case--as Professor Pollard, an authority on the two Tudor Henrys, once re-marked--the integrity of a historian is to be tested less by the accuracy of his facts than by his choice and use of them...
...The latter seems to me the man of open mind in this instance...
Vol. 10 • July 1929 • No. 9
