The Bells of St Mary's
THE BELLS OF ST. MARY'S MARCH 25, 1934, will mark the three-hundredth anniversary of the Maryland colony. The men who landed from the Ark and the Dove, to kneel for Mass at a place they called St....
...It is no comforting page of history which shows us a body of Puritans, chased out of Virginia and allowed to settle in Maryland, turning on their hosts, exiling Catholic priests and wantonly destroying church property...
...Yet such an occasion can only be a recommendation of American experience, of American tradition...
...They could not foresee the swift and stupendous development of America, destined to rear industrial leviathans beside streams which the Indian fished for trout...
...Lord Calvert ordered his representatives "to treat the Protestants with as much mildness and favor as justice will require," and the command was obeyed to the letter...
...We sometimes have the feeling that modern moods of tolerance are quite like modern moods of intolerance...
...However that may be, Catholics and Protestants stood side by side in the little colonial assembly hall and passed the law without a dissenting vote...
...Indeed, what is respect for others, or what is regard for the human conscience, without belief that these others are immortal and that the conscience is sacred...
...Mary's, were gifted with no prophetic vision...
...Who shall say that the United States is now as firmly committed to freedom of conscience as it once was...
...On behalf of the state, Governor Ritchie appointed a committee embracing persons of differing faiths to draw up a festival program and to consider ways and means for memorializing the enduring meaning of the Maryland experiment...
...The Maryland Puritan was a religious fanatic, unable to stomach the convictions of others...
...Indeed, the second course is manifestly far more evil than the first...
...Bancroft grew eloquent when he spoke of Maryland: "Thus the Catholics took possession of the little place, and religious liberty obtained a home- its only home in the wide world-at the humble village, which bore the name of St...
...Totally indifferent to the content of faith, pushing the inner boredom of prosperity to its ultimate conclusion, the Bolshevist sees only the authority of the religious ministry and sees that as a rival for its own autocratic claims...
...We find even very good people professing to hold that social reform in any given country may legitimately close churches or forbid religious teaching if it can claim that "ecclesiastics are reactionary...
...And from the beginning of their work The Calvert Associates, pledged to the advancement of religious liberty, have left no stone unturned in the hope of cultivating a nation-wide interest in the matter...
...It is content that organs should accompany Divine worship with steady diapasons, provided only that the commodity index remains firm...
...and so Maryland will, after all, be the chief concern, as a source and an example...
...But one must not forget that the colonists who sailed in the Ark and the Dove were predominantly Church of England folk, apart from the "twenty gentlemen adventurers" of good family who supervised the expedition and at first controlled the government...
...They declared that "the enforcing of conscience in matters of religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence in those commonwealths where it hath been practised," and they resolved that no person should be "molested or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her religion...
...Mary's ring!ary's ring...
...The first are products of indifference...
...And industrial society in revolution...
...Afterward, despite the religious quarrels which bore down upon the colony from Virginia, nothing disrupted the relations existing between the original colonists...
...its prosperity and peace seemed assured...
...Thereafter history could say: if these citizens have managed to respect each others' beliefs, as much can legitimately be expected of others...
...the interests of its people and its proprietary were united...
...Maybe churchmen are not infrequently reactionary...
...But that which they professed- that which was the reason why men venerated them- abides as the only possible defense of those rights which Jefferson, and all America with him, have resolutely defined as personal and inalienable...
...But vitality of every sort is constantly in danger of anaemia...
...and for some years its eternal peace and prosperity were undisturbed...
...A prospering industrial society puts the greatest stress upon prices, markets and dominating personalities...
...In our own day and age, however, the Puritan's code has largely been rewritten in terms of economics and "political progress...
...Nor will the chief stress be laid upon history...
...On the evening of Tuesday, March 25, the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, will be open to everybody, regardless of race or creed, who is interested in the principle of religious liberty...
...This year The Calvert Associates will stage the largest assembly in their history...
...Speakers have reviewed Maryland history...
...Undoubtedly cooperation of Church and state, when based upon wrong assumptions, may hamper the development of legitimate civic aspirations...
...We have termed the matter of especial interest to Catholics...
...The record of the voyage shows us that, even in that age and under the trying circumstances of a long sea voyage, nothing marred the good feeling that prevailed among the travelers...
...Yearly meetings have called attention to the tercentenary...
...Here, then, were laid the foundations of a great principle, which has since been accepted as one of the most vital parts of our national tradition...
...If one had assured them that the poor of all nations would come here in throngs, braving the hardships of pioneer years for the sake of eventual improvement for their children, they would have shaken their heads unbelievingly...
...And so, in memory of freedom, let the bells of St...
...Such were the beautiful auspices under which the province of Maryland started into being...
...The Toleration Act, passed in 1649, was only the formula in which this experience was summed up...
...the second spring from total lack of interest...
...How remote from this confession of the soul's death are the memorials of Maryland 1 Everything in these old records testifies that a regard for others which may in the beginning have been dictated by expediency and justified by Bellarmine, was maintained with a courtesy, a suffused charity, to be described only with noble adjectives...
...The remark calls, however, for immediate qualification...
...Mary's...
...One holds rightly, therefore, that the Maryland system was something more than a legal convention dictated by expediency or ordained from above...
...The idea of bringing out the significance of the Maryland achievement is therefore eminently practical...
...It was an experiment lived out by hundreds of people, under conditions which were prosaic enough...
...The music is charming, sometimes beautiful, but could it not be spared, after all...
...During several years various organizations have been active in preparing for the coming centenary...
...Whenever a powerful group is organized for the purpose of making others conform to its social or intellectual doctrine, conscience is almost the first part of the human realm to be laid under siege...
...One realizes of course that the coming tercentenary needs the especial interest of Catholics...
...The program, one is happy to announce, will include addresses by distinguished representatives of the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish groups, as well as music akin to the liturgies of these groups...
...This Act remained in force throughout Maryland so long as the energies of the colonists could prevail against fanatical Puritan invaders who now and then usurped control of the government and for a time managed to proscribe both the Catholic and the Anglican faiths...
...Investigation shows that the wording of the act might have been even more liberal if immigrants from neighboring Virginia had not insisted upon a greater amount of rigor than the Calvert government demanded...
...Certainly this record would have been far different had it not been for the ceaseless cultural effort of the Jesuits who, as Englishmen of the finest stamp, exemplified the blend of faith and humanism now so widely urged as a necessary barrier against barbarism...
...Though only a handful of Jews then resided in the colony, they, too, were unmolested...
...For the first time even in the history of the new world, a government undertook to guarantee the inviolability of every form of Christian belief...
...Many of them became converts to Catholicism, and the others lived at peace...
...The meeting will emphasize the fact that in several ominous ways the rights of conscience are being undermined, and that religious belief is even fighting for life under new and radically constituted governments...
...But if it is deplorable that ecclesiasticism should oppose social reform, it is certainly also calamitous that spokesmen for social reform should seek to wipe out religion...
...But the least among them must have felt that the memory of one thing they were doing would abide-the declaration that Maryland would persecute nobody because of his religious faith...
...Perhaps the contemporary inability to understand this difference-the gulf between the something which is done with wealth and the something which is done with the soul of man-reposes less upon mistaken reasoning than upon dwindling affection for spiritual truth...
...The servants of the Church have sometimes been unmindful of charity...
...In order that the event may be brought home to them more fully his grace the archbishop of Baltimore has appointed a national committee, the members of which are the Reverend John LaFarge, S. J., the Reverend Peter Guilday and the editor of The Commonweal...
...This page reminds us, however, that so lofty an ideal as respect for the beliefs of others is in constant danger of attack...
...Each of these has long since given much time and thought to the idea, and each represents a body of public opinion to which the memorials of Maryland are dear...
...Its history is the history of benevolence, gratitude and toleration...
...It is true that Lord Baltimore was a convert to the Church, and that from the very first day Jesuit fathers were associated with his work...
...History blushes for their occasional cruelty and time serving...
Vol. 11 • April 1930 • No. 22
