Going on 60:
Editors, The
From the first year Commonweal begins its sixtieth year of publication WITH THIS issue, Commonweal begins its sixtieth year of publication. Dated November 12, 1924, the first issue of the magazine...
...Again, equality implies independence, with a dash of arrogance thereto, moreover, and to the vast majority of women it stands really for supremacy...
...He is well aware that the Church makes ample provision for expert attention to such matters . . . and that contents him...
...It was on that afternoon that the House passed H.R...
...The answer to this is that the religious aim of expressing solemnity, peace, and inner communion with Deity is not promoted by erecting a building whose details are in no wise different in execution, however different in aim, from those of a bank or a moving picture theatre: the point is that we must express the religious character of a church by doing things mat a commercial building would not think of doing...
...the foundations of a healthy and beneficent parish life laid...
...What this principle does mean is that the architect shall restrict himself to providing a well-designed and well-produced shell, frankly a shell, with no attempt to catch the spirit, through ornament or constructional imitation, of other "styles" and periods...
...William C. Murphy, "Outlawing the Alien" March 11, 1925 'RERUM NOVARUM' HO more practical step to encourage lay Catholics to do something more with their religion than simply to consider it a private and personal affair, with no relation to the social problems of the age, has been undertaken for a long time than the movement to popularize the study of the great Encyclical on the Condition of Labor, of Pope Leo XIII...
...Their Church is international in foundation, in tradition, in organization, and in spirit...
...If Catholics would have a living art once more in their churches they would single out these artists, would foster their work, would give opportunity to apprentices and disciples...
...All the while devout Catholics like Cezanne, and sincere religious spirits like Van Gogh, to pick out two great examples from an older generation, have shared the homelessness of the modern artist, instead of rinding a place for themselves within the churches...
...To some extent, everyone who knows Italy must concede that Fascism has done considerable work to remedy the ingrained social ills of the country...
...Today -these hours when a new world is rousing-must produce its own leadership and life...
...that in place of competition in an over-crowded field we shall occupy a position that hitherto has been left vacant...
...we are forced to derive the building materials of the soul from the generally accepted quarries...
...Well, it has been on the lips of Francis, Dominic, Ignatius, and Augustine...
...No man was ever tempted to handle a hornets' nest by reflecting that scientifically it is merely a particular concourse of atoms...
...and our talk of Catholic art is sorry stuff while we leave the general tenor of the country's aesthetic experience unaffected, excepting by cheap approximations to the rue Saint Sulpice-or even plaster Gothic...
...Nationalism, however, is something else...
...What woman of charm would not feel her marriage a failure were she forced to do so...
...It is the vital concern of all American citizens...
...and one wished that it might be a symptom of awakening intelligence...
...The Editors, "The Prohibition Jam" August 19, 1925 METHODIST REFORMERS THE BOARD of Temperance of the Methodist Episcopal Church, ensconced in its Washington headquarters, has just loosed a broadside at the expense of the intelligentsia...
...The result is that our efforts to reproduce a Gothic or a Romanesque shell are less significant, aesthetically, than the run of buildings we seek to escape...
...The fact is now recognized and by none more distinctly than by the physicists themselves that the progress of science gathers much about the how, but little about the why...
...But Commonweal also gave extensive and lively coverage (to be surveyed in a future issue) to the Scopes trial and the many attendant questions of religion, science, democracy, and education that are as challenging today as six decades ago...
...I do not deny that it may, in certain cases, be the least of many evils...
...Between pure patriotism and Christianity there can be no conflict...
...Industrial conditions have generally created a common culture which suffers no isolation of body or spirit...
...And you would further find that there was a sharp distinction in his thought between the crown as an office and the personality of the king...
...The bill was euphemistically described as proposing legislation which would authorize deportation of aliens who were guilty of violations of the anti-narcotic and anti-liquor laws of the United States...
...Much of what these people want-the curtailing of erotic literature and the improvement of the theatre-is eminently desirable...
...The editors had to deal at length with the Oregon school law which only a Supreme Court decision prevented from outlawing parochial education and compelling all parents to send their children to public schools...
...A dozen institutions-good and bad-will have gone by the board...
...Carlton J. H. Hayes "Obligations to America" January 14, 1925 RELIGION & SCIENCE A QUESTION which often disturbs thoughtful minds is to what extent religious belief is allowed by science...
...The answer comes in a kind of melancholy chorus-so much less than he might...
...Certain characteristics of Commonweal were established from the start...
...It is argued that the thing can be pushed through, finally...
...Your motive may be generous, or it may be merely timid...
...We are dependent upon mass organization for our shoes and suppers...
...for with all their imperfections the latter buildings are alive, and with their studied gestures, our reproductions are cold and dead...
...Do we inform ourselves of what has been done to deal with the causes of war...
...But the Catholics have sometimes proved recalcitrant-there have been Fascist attacks . . . and the Holy Father has had to protest against violence and unfairness...
...It precludes tenderness, it precludes absurdity, and...
...Being a romantic woman, and therefore regarding all men as children, I realize what cherished toys they give up in order to make a home, to marry, and have the privilege of supporting a woman all her life, and how eagerly and simply they set about this deed, inspired thereto by the thought of a woman's dependence on them, her need of their strength...
...They never condescend to make a reasoned analysis of the situation, or of the remedial measures that might be introduced...
...Suppose then that one should get on such free and easy terms with an average Briton as to put to him such questions as these‚ "How can you reconcile yourself to being the subject of a king when you think of such a ruler as Richard III...
...But though all these things are a source of just pride, they must not be allowed to blind us to the peculiar generic necessities of the time which are social, even as the Church itself is social...
...When philosophy has done its worst, people will still pick and choose, love and hate, plan and strive, and all this quite as much by those who describe man as an epiphenomenon as by those who believe in free agency...
...The Editors, "What Shall the Layman Do...
...Olive Wadsley, "Marriage and Sex Equality" February 25, 1925 LEWIS MUMFORD ON CHURCH ARCHITECTURE FROM THE CHURCHES at Ravenna down to the most florid and overblown outbursts of the Baroque in Spain and Italy, the Roman Catholic churches have always been built in harmony with the major buildings of their period...
...There are other matters of almost equal importance...
...It will be the independent, personal product of its editors and contributors, who, for the most part, will be laymen...
...The world cannot assimilate this autocracy of positivism, any more than it can digest the rhapsodies of Trotsky...
...to achieve his main effects .. . by his characteristic manner of enclosing space...
...the Dictator . . . made Catholicism the culture of Italy, and restored the universality of religious education...
...But secular education is a limitation, if it be only a self-limitation...
...Its first article was by a non-Catholic...
...Another way of establishing the character of the building is by providing the architect with a plot sufficiently large so that by creating bays for the chapels or by altering the proportions of transepts, chancel, and nave, he can model the building as a whole...
...Its distinctive unity and universality, as well as its mission, are endangered by war, and by the causes of war, to a much greater degree than are the localism and separateness of any Protestant church...
...Dated November 12, 1924, the first issue of the magazine opened its lead editorial by noting that as it went to press, " the election returns are far from complete but it is known that Calvin Coolidge has been decisively chosen as the next President of the United States...
...Although Catholic communicants no doubt see beyond the tawdry reality of the living symbol, as a little girl reads into her rag-doll the glow of a living baby, the ornament and statuary that fill so many modern churches point to a sad compromise with utilitarianism...
...and especially, so to speak, about the nature of nature...
...The man who teaches authoritative answers to ultimate questions, even if he only says that Mumbo Jumbo made the world out of a pumpkin, may be dogmatizing or persecuting or tyrannically laying down the law about everything, but he is not blinking anything...
...forgot to be worried about the grown men and women who were in danger, and called for help only "in the name of the children the future American citizens...
...we ought not to assume that we can share in the direction of the American mind unless we are ready to foster intellectual leadership...
...Such issues are now largely forgotten by almost everyone but scholars...
...Poignant expression was given to it in Tennyson's In Memoriam...
...The aspect in which they are in the habit of contemplating the Church is not as a system of authority but as a spiritual home, which makes the universe a companionable and comfortable place in which to be...
...We cannot afford to sever Christian principle from the practice of industrial business...
...September 23, 1925 GKC ON RELIGION & EDUCATION IT IS only by a definite and even deliberate narrowing of the mind that we can keep religion out of education...
...Its gospel is international and humanitarian...
...The problem, in its manifold ramifications, is not the concern alone of any political party or racial group or religious body in the United States...
...Whether we wish it or not, the great debate which those names signify rushes to an outcome by which our children shall be made or marred...
...Such affluence was not to last, alas...
...And this is the explanation, perhaps, of how it happened on the afternoon of February 10, 1925, the House of Representatives of the Congress of these United States made merry with a pigtail pulling and snowball throwing that‚ be it said with prayerful thankfulness‚ has few parallels in legislative history...
...Anxiety on the point is very marked in modern literature...
...11796 "to provide for the deportation of certain aliens, and for other purposes...
...The truth is that matters of this order, which among our Protestant friends are very much to the fore, are among Catholics quite back and away from their ordinary moods...
...From a purely practical standpoint, genuine art is as cheap as its substitutes...
...it is as well to leave the towers to Mammon, and to achieve the same purpose not by an outward gesture but by an inward grace...
...But the fundamental principle of Fascism is as mystifying as it is dangerous...
...me cultivation of the little language everyone in love speaks (and no one admits they do) of intimacies...
...If there is such a thing in the world as a donkey deliberately wearing blinkers, it is the enlightened educationist, who is always making a nervous effort to keep out of his task of imparting knowledge any reference to the things that men from the beginning of the world have most wanted to know...
...The editors wanted to clear a space for Catholic views in the American culture generally but also for reflection and self-assessment within the American church...
...are bound to have their chance on the stage of the world's progress...
...in three separate states political campaigns are being fought primarily around the attitude of the nominee towards liquor...
...as distinct from what might be called the Catholic inlook...
...Indeed casual intercourse with Catholics often tends to increase the puzzlement...
...It's a truism to say that men are simply boys grown older...
...just as much as it has been the revolutionary concern of Marx, Jaures and Lenin...
...Now among European nations, as nations, there is nothing of the kind...
...The Editors, "Imperfect Sympathies" February 18, 1925 VICTIMIZING IMMIGRANTS WHAT ADULT in the genus Nordic does not recall the exquisite thrill that was his when in childhood he was privileged to pull the pigtail of the Chinese laundry-man, or pelt the "Wop" fruit vendor with snowballs...
...It is not too much to say that it is the dominant note of the poetic output of the Victorian age...
...Some time ago...
...It is however quite noticeable that scientific opinion of this order has never been allowed to rule conduct in the practical affairs of life...
...Never has there been greater need for some American Ozanam or Count de Mun, who shall gather his fellows round him for a mission of social peace...
...Mussolini tried to wipe out with a gesture the splendid achievement of Don Sturzo and his friends...
...I refer to the contemporary confusion of proper and ennobling patriotism with intolerant blatant nationalism...
...They couldn't hit back...
...The Constitution of the United States has, for the citizens of the United States, a religious value...
...The whole question may be a joke to the juvenile hordes who stagger through college proms...
...If secular painters like Diego de Rivera will work on these terms, as he is now working on the government buildings and schools in Mexico, why should the Church not be able to foster a corps of painters and sculptors who would work in the same manner...
...Carlton J. H. Hayes, "Let Us Make Peace" July 1, 1925 MUSSOLINI'S FASCISM THE GREAT congress of the Fascisti marked the climax of melodrama in politics...
...that it is certainly better than a political injustice...
...In 1924-25, the Ku Klux Klan was targeting Catholics, and genteel forms of Klanism were not unknown in the most respectable circles all of which absorbed a good bit of editorial attention in Commonweal...
...That a robust modern art is not Incompatible with Catholicism...
...It is the contrast between the attitude of European nations today towards their constitutions, and the attitude of the American people towards theirs...
...And yet, by a curious irony of circumstances, both in information on international affairs, and in interest in the problem of peace, Catholic Americans, as a whole, lag behind their Protestant fellow-countrymen, and lag far behind their own European co-religionists...
...The word is not wisely chosen by the critic...
...Action for them spells a tincture of federal legislation, guaranteed to foment rebellion, to waste the public funds, and to develop a system of underground subterfuge...
...Because prohibition in the United States has refused to compromise, it has driven itself into a jam which it seeks to unravel with brute force and headsrong will...
...in answering fully and unreservedly every call of grace...
...The notion that art needs vast endowments of money is unsound, Where the artist is given scope for workmanship he will work for a day's wages and be glad to get it...
...The Editors, "Week By Week" May 13, 1925 CATHOLICS & PEACE DO WE UNDERSTAND what havoc was wrought by the last great war-what vaster havoc is certain to be wrought by another great war...
...The "deluge" that can so comfortably be projected into the future may swirl, not only over the machinery and wealth of civilization, but also terribly and abysmally over souls...
...It forms a keel or balance...
...The life of the race is becoming, more and more, a tangle of social concerns...
...If you do not know, of course, you will not be able to say...
...To the question whether science allows the existence of a sphere for religion it may be answered that it is not a matter over which science has any jurisdiction...
...Sound information and healthy interest must accompany each other, and both precede conviction...
...These things are out of sight, behind factory walls...
...Is there, one asks rather doubtfully, a right and a wrong in this matter...
...Its pages will be open to writers holding different forms of Christian belief, and in some cases to authors who do not profess any form of Christian faith...
...It is impossible to tell if more serious developments may be in store...
...but he is interested in hoping that there will be no identification of Pilgrim's Progress and the Congressional Record...
...There are those who feel that all talk about social activity is quite like band-music-suited to occasions and gatherings, but not the normal stuff of life...
...Impartial observers, who have been in close touch with affairs there, believe that already death has taken possession of its members, that the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics seems destined to disappear almost as suddenly as it has arisen...
...And so each day brings its fresh waste of men, money, energy and the spirit of cooperation...
...The world may gasp, speculation in the lira may reach a point of frenzy, American debt commissions may suggest that something ought to be done about sums outstanding since 1917-but all of this cannot curb the will of Italy's strong men to set up a Bolshevism a rebours...
...she wants to go one better and direct it...
...the American ideal we all agree, and yet it has not brought us far along the road toward abolishing inequalities that necessarily result from child labor...
...It is a remarkable circumstance that now when the utilitarian value of science is immensely greater than ever before, confidence in the philosophical value of its concepts is rapidly diminishing...
...As sure background The Commonweal will have the continuous, unbroken tradition and teachings of the historic Mother Church...
...It must also be vastly more than a diverting riddle to those who assume that governmental authority is a precious and sacred matter, basic to the smoothing of all our relations one with the other, and nursed in the shadow of the Divine hand...
...what can remedy and fortify it is simply improvement of that diet...
...I said,' 'by a curious irony of circumstance," because of all the people who do not, and yet should, concern themselves with fundamental international problems, Catholic Americans stand foremost...
...Hilaire Belloc, "On Constitutions" September 16, 1925 TO LIVE MYSTICALLY CHRISTIAN mysticism has nothing in common with esoteric doctrines...
...Do we reach reasoned convictions as to what more must be done in order to establish effectively international peace...
...And yet, until it is appreciated, all discussions upon relations between the old world and the new is bound to go wrong...
...Although it was written thirty-four years ago, and was prompted by conditions at that time‚ so comprehensive, far-sighted, and sound were its pronouncements, that it has remained the fundamental statement of the Catholic position...
...It supplies the conceptions at once of certitude and permanence in its own particular field, which is that of the temporal government of man...
...K. Chesterton, "Religion and Education" October 14, 1925...
...The first and most obvious thing that a person is interested in is what sort of world he is living in, and why he is living in it...
...It is usually so difficult to draw him into arguments and explanations that there is a pretty general impression that the ordinary run of Catholics do not know as much about their church as the ordinary run of people do about the denominations to which they belong...
...The average Catholic seems to be strangely indifferent to such matters...
...Eric Gill in England...
...If you could look into his mind you would not find there a particle of interest in the affairs of Richard III...
...Wise old Le Play observed that good government is always a matter of constructive compromise...
...They are citizens of America and they are members of a universal non-national Church...
...and I cannot see what on earth any happy normal woman can hope to gain from equality...
...It is a vainglorious assumption that one's own nation is superior to all other nations and entitled to pursue its selfish ends without any regard to others' welfare...
...To live mystically is to live the life of heaven on earth...
...a moderator...
...In return, however, it seems to have been expected that Catholics as a body would invest in black shirts and feathers...
...The question is, what shall that place be, and how will they utilize it...
...Opinion of this nature implies such deep misunderstandings of Catholic temperament and habits of thought that . . . DEPARTMENT OF GREAT PREDICTIONS THE RUSSIAN people...
...is proved by the work in our own day of Mr...
...Its second article was by G. K. Chesterton, on "Religion and Sex...
...The Editors, "Religion and Science" March 4, 1925 CHILD LABOR WHEN the Mayor of Nome made his appeal for help in the diptheria plague, he...
...Do we appreciate the special causes of international war in our age-the anarchistic system of jealous, selfish, sovereign states-the intolerant, boastful sentiment of nationalism-the economic rivalries, coupled with abuses of capitalism and with the philosophy of might and mania for bigness-the competition in national armaments - the tortuous conduct of secret diplomacy...
...The thought of the average Catholic runs very much on similar lines...
...Methodist boards have done more to corrode morals in the United States than two dozen agencies of perdition...
...But it will be in no sense nor could it possibly assert itself to be an authoritative or authorized mouthpiece of the Catholic Church...
...The Editors, "Russia Passes into History" July 8, 1925 probably the the most available mode of throwing light upon it is to resort to analogy...
...The Editors, "Week by Week" July 8, 1925 DEPARTMENT OF THINGS WE WISH WE HADN'T SAID I have never known a happy marriage which maintained sex equality as a tenet...
...But seven years have produced no evidence in support of this contention...
...That is why the issues turning upon questions of biblical interpretation and their theological formulation, which are now disturbing the great Protestant denominations, do not make even a ripple among the Catholic laity...
...It is anything but a jest to the crowds which have been mowed down by poisonous drinks, to the dozens of poor devils who have gone to their deaths at the hands of revenue officers, to the rising capitalists who have made of smuggling an easy avenue to millions...
...The comment of science used to be that such notions are quite illusory, and that in reality all events and occurrences, including the processes of thought and invention, are determined wholly by physical antecedents and are fixed and inevitable in their nature...
...All those who have attained a real eminence for knowledge of American affairs concede-very frequently in public-that the Eighteenth Amendment, as at present enforced, stands condemned...
...Its teaching is of those very virtues upon which, it is universally admitted, the future peace of the world must rest-humility, justice, and charity...
...their faith teaches them to love and service their country but it also teaches them that all men are brothers and that nations have obligations as well as rights...
...The natural thing is to say what you think about nature...
...Equality is a stark thing from the point of view of the normal woman . .. equality precludes spoiling, and what woman worth her powder can live wholly without that...
...if you have convictions upon these cosmic and fundamental things, whether negative or positive, you are an instructor who is on one most important point refusing to instruct...
...that it may be a sort of loyalty to a political compromise...
...It consists chiefly in self-renunciation in order to follow Jesus Christ...
...There should be greater room for free and gracious expressions at these points: it is absurd to think that the aesthetic expression of the Savior, the Mother of Heaven, or the saints should become fossilized at some particular moment in the church's life, so that thereafter the robe and vesture and very anatomical form should express only the conceptions and limitations of that moment...
...With one sweep he abolished all the heresies, the schisms, the agnosticisms of the modern era...
...We are told that the chain of graft, indiscretion, and woe, can finally be transmuted into a wreath as sweet and dry as the withered laurel taken from a Roman tomb...
...but certainly it is not in itself educational...
...Your feminine sex-equality advocate does not really want to share life on the level with man...
...The Editors, "An Introduction," November 12, 1924 PATRIOTISM & NATIONALISM A. .. PROBLEM now confronting this country, as it confronts all countries, is not a bread-and-butter problem...
...How much has the American Catholic done to influence the trend of his age...
...The changes that are going on in scientific thought have not yet had much effect upon imaginative literature, but in time they will...
...This feeling of antagonism drives people back into the sanctuary of the past, and they build churches that have something of the outward shape and semblance of a Romanesque or a Norman or a perpendicular building...
...He could hold the one in profound esteem and yet feel entirely free to criticize the other...
...It even begins to seem as though the supreme test case of Mussolini's power would be the Catholic Church...
...Although originally hard pressed to collect the funds needed to begin the magazine, by the date of its first issue Commonweal had received considerable support, a good deal of it pledged by conservative Catholics...
...but the fate of these churches, even the best of them, is to show on every stone the arid marks of our mechanical culture...
...and it is even worse when these models are stereotyped and deadened by the methods and workmanship of the commercial market...
...And if civilization receives irreparable hurt from another war, it will be preeminently that civilization which has received life and being from the Catholic Church...
...In the twelve months leading to its sixtieth birthday, Commonweal plans occasionally to mark its history, beginning with this selection of material from the first year of publication...
...He was content to be a British subject not because he approved of everything in the history of his country or in the behavior of her rulers, but because he believed that thereby he obtained the benefits of an organization of authority which maintained public order and individual freedom...
...We ourselves are convinced that the amelioration can come only out of the great gardens of the Catholic mind-the satisfying abundance of that which is called Christendom...
...How is it that you fellows put up with a monarch at all, instead of estabishing a republic and electing its president as we do...
...Owen R. Lovejoy "Ratify the Twentieth Amendment" March 4, 1925 THE CATHOLIC TEMPERAMENT EVEN AMONG well-disposed people, quite willing to accord to the Catholic Church the respectful consideration which they are in the habit of extending to all denominations, there is a sort of puzzlement about its beliefs and practices...
...It lies quite out of its reach, as both Huxley and Mill candidly admit...
...The average Briton would be apt first to give you a stare of astonishment, but about all he would say would be that their form of government suited them very well...
...What unsettles the world in our time is, fundamentally, its diet of ideas...
...Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" more truly anticipated the usual outcome...
...On the same day that the epidemic broke in Nome, the legislatures in three states decided that the young children in the sweatshops and factories of the nation could be used up and thrown on the rubbish pile like old mop rags, for all they cared...
...We agree with our minds, and then let our imagination run wild, till Washington looks like Moscow, individualism like communism, and Congress seems like a haunted house of which we must speak ill and be afraid...
...Poverty and opposition have not, and cannot, shackle us...
...Churches have been built...
...The intimate expression of the Catholic spirit must come through its treatment of the altar, the Communion table, the shrines, the baptismal font...
...At once the dog-teams started mushing North on their errand of mercy and human decency...
...Bat how express the religious purpose of the building...
...Profit cannot be derived, however, out of a mere, sterile past...
...The magazine intended to speak to American Catholics but, as importantly, to "the mind of the whole American people...
...Where the opinion of its editors, contributors, and readers differs on subjects yet unsettled by competent authority, it will be an open forum for the discussion of such differences in a spirit of good temper...
...They must cling to the patriotism that is humble, and they must shun the nationalism that is proud...
...The Editors, "Week by Week" August 5, 1925 CATHOLIC SOCIAL CONCERN WHAT MEMBERS of the hierarchy, thoughtful students, and experienced leaders have continually said we repeat firmly-it is not sufficient, in this day and age, that the individual take cognizance of himself alone...
...it is an emotional problem, and as such it is difficult to define or deal with...
...We ought not, for instance, to be indifferent towards the problem of international peace, which a succession of Sovereign Pontiffs has set before the faithful as a sacred goal...
...The Editors, "Life and Leadership" September 2, 1925 HILAIRE BELLOC & THE CONSTITUTION ONE OF THE most arresting of modern contrasts, full of practical effect, and affecting all our international relations, is hardly recognized over here in Europe, nor in America...
...And one reason for celebrating the journal's longevity is to remind ourselves of the sacrifices and generosity that have kept Commonweal going and to renew our hope that such a tradition can be maintained vigorously into the future...
...We don't do things that way down here, where life is softer...
...But what of tower or steeple?, . . Nowadays...
...Yet there is something ruthless in the modern skyscraper and grain elevator and factory that makes a sensitive person fee...
...schools established...
...It has the value of an unquestioned authority...
...They believe that popular agitation and decisions by casual vote in a transient assembly are as poor a way of settling such questions as they would be of construing the constitution of the United States...
...instinctively that the mode of construction is at odds with humane and religious ends...
...Michael Williams, the journal's dynamic founder and first editor, insisted on the need to convey "the Catholic outlook...
...and, like the population, the supply of flasks increases every minute...
...and although the medieval mason quite certainly didn't regard the House of God as on the "same footing with commercial and industrial buildings," he used the same mode of construction and decoration: the barns and kitchens of the ruined abbey at Glastonbury are as fine and beautiful as the abbey church itself must have been - and they are fine and beautiful in the same way...
...Catholic Americans have a very important contribution to make to this whole problem...
...With...
...But when it comes to a discussion of methods, the board and its associates are about as discerning as the Headless Horseman...
...In his case religious hope remained even though its warrant seemed doubtful, but in general, the tendency was towards a surrender to agnosticism...
...it may amuse the wayward many who scamper down secret staircases towards the vat that foams in silence...
...He does not feel that it is any more necessary for him to be an expert in history or theology to be a good Catholic than it is necessary for one to study the decisions of the Supreme Court to be a good American citizen...
...THE EDITORS CATHOLIC & INDEPENDENT We believe that The Commonweal will be so fundamentally different...
...The thrill of those bygone halcyon days was not based on any special dislike of the Chinaman or the Italian, it was simply the gratification of boyhood's inherent barbarism...
...We must have the practical sagacity to build with the materials we are most familiar with, and to adopt the mode of construction the architect and builder work most courageously in today...
...The Catholic answer is that there is an order of things which the proofs and verifications of the physicists cannot touch, whose data are gathered not in the scientific laboratory but from revelation, history, and personal experience...
...In a Catholic church the possibilities offered by combining the stable elements of the Catholic ritual with the variable elements of site and die surrounding street, are literally infinite...
...And, of course, members of Congress (except the Lady from California) are also boys grown up...
...Rome'spress is gagged, the might of political Masonry is tottering, the grip of a firm governmental hand on all forms of industry is the order of the day...
...in always acting in conformity with our faith, and in becoming more and more conscious of the divine life already lying latent within us, which, at the time of our death, will open into full splendor...
...In reality, as it passed the House, the bill would convey to the immigration authorities the power to deport any alien upon whom their displeasure might chance to fix its capricious self...
...The average American is not interested in the intelligentsia...
...Lewis Mumford, "Architecture and Catholicism" ON PROHIBITION WE HAVE recently seen a change in the attitude of the Federal Government towards enforcement of the [Eighteenth Amendment...
...The daily grind of ten hours or more at bench and wheel, the nights of weariness and abandon, the accidents from power machinery that come more frequently to adolescents than to others, the poisoning of dyes and varnish fumes, these things are the always possible heritage of the 990,000 children employed, not on the farms, but in commerce and industry...
...We are of the opinion that both the clergy and intelligent laymen concur in giving an affirmative answer to this question...
...Felix Klein, "Mysticism, A Question of Today" September 16, 1925 ROLE OF THE LAITY ARE THERE not many forms of social and intellectual work in which laymen, fully accepting spiritual and moral guidance, are (simply because they are laymen, and hence have forms of experience only partially, if at all, open to the clergy) much better fitted to devise and direct the practical means and ways by which these principles may be fruitfully expressed...
...the danger is that our complacency may keep us in perennial bondage...
...These people," it was asserted, "may be intelligentsia, but it is strange that they do not even know when the time has arrived for a haircut.'' The observation is remarkably realistic for so visionary a group as the board...
...And it so happened that the "Chink" and the "Wop," being foreigners, were fair game...
...And if a scientist's nose is tweaked he cannot be appeased by the suggestion that notion of personal insult is illusory a mere by-product of chemical reaction in his system...
...G...
...in loving God above everything, and our fellow creatures because of Him...
...With black shirts, medals, huz-zahs, feathers, and speeches, Italy pledged to Mussolini the power to inaugurate a new regime...
...Its roots are selfishness and pride, and its whole spirit is antithetical to that of Christianity...
...We forget simply because most of us never knew them personally, because most of us have enough sorrow in our lives, and because they do not thrust themselves upon our attention even to the same extent as a typhoid plague or a chicken cholera epidemic...
...Does not the Gothic help us here-do not towers help- does not at least a little stained glass come in...
...It is sometimes said that the devotees of a doctrinal religion, who are so often depicted as donkeys, are in matters of this kind wearing blinkers...
...One of the ways of doing this in a city is to devote the funds that are saved by a simple, vernacular mode of construction to the purchase of land sufficient for a park or garden, screening the church from the dust and noise of the streets, putting it apart from the mundane buildings that now jostle it and jeer it, and, incidentally, providing a resting place for mothers and babies...
...and it is only our own dullness, our own lack of discrimination, that lets us accept the muddled unfermented grape juice of commercial vendage instead of the true wine of the spirit...
...Few, except those badly bitten by the germ of Communism, believe that the present Russian system can long survive...
Vol. 110 • November 1983 • No. 20
