On the Restoration of Values
ON THE RESTORATION OF VALUES ONE of the Jesuit scientists who throughout the world occupy leading positions in the observation and study of the physical forces of the universe, recently made some...
...The motion-picture cameras invaded the cemetery, accompanied by their phonographic machines, so that audiences in movietone theatres throughout the country could see the pictures and hear the voices of the immense multitudes which day and night have been thronging the cemetery...
...When one of the giant steamships put into port after the earthquake, the officers and passengers told a strange, almost uncanny story of their experiences...
...After all, it is for us to study that social mechanism...
...Yet here we deal with matters more manageable...
...Extraordinarily high tides were experienced all along the northern coast of the United States and Canada, and did much damage...
...The mechanism survives...
...Let us turn now to the Maiden graveyard and ask ourselves what has happened there, and what connection, if any, those happenings may have with the other events we have been discussing...
...The world of religion, we might say, has experienced a violent shock, comparable to those which disturbed our physical world and shook our social fabric...
...Several of the Atlantic cable lines were snapped, and delicate machinery in the cable stations on shore was put out of operation, seriously interfering with American communications with Europe...
...It may seem like a fanciful incongruity of thought to connect two or three other events which occurred at about the same time with this extraordinary earthquake ; and, it should be needless to say, there is no necessary connection between the events themselves...
...We refer to the panic in Wall Street as one of these events, and to the happenings in Holy Cross Cemetery, Maiden, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, as the other...
...Surely, also, we may be glad of our disposition to stiffen our wills and brace our nerves in the wake of such shocks as strike upon our social mechanism from time to time...
...Surely we may rejoice in humanity's indestructible courage and fortitude in the face of such natural disasters and dangers as are illustrated by man's behavior at times of earthquake and flood and eruption and great storms...
...The phenomena following upon the sudden entrance of the pebble into the placid pool would be, of course, exceedingly slight and evanescent in comparison with the enormous force and titanic extent of the phenomena of the earthquake, but both would be the result of interference with a condition of balance and harmony and order by the sudden injection of an exterior thing...
...We obviously must confess our total inability to draw any conclusions from these facts which could adequately exhibit their significance...
...As for such a shock to our ordinary religious system as the impact of the supernatural forces displayed at Maiden, might it not cause us to ask ourselves whether or not man, for all his bravery, with all his natural strength and abilities, has not been and still is neglecting the deepest and strongest of all the forces which humanity may use and which, apparently, the humble young priest buried in Maiden, did use...
...which are theoretically at least within our own human control...
...Disturbed and shaken profoundly by the slipping of the rocks underneath the sea, the waters raged and rushed upon the shore...
...It may be that a restoration of values is needed not only in Wall Street, but in our souls...
...The boy priest who was buried at Maiden sixty years ago was in life not at all remarkable among his fellows in any of the ways which we consider noteworthy...
...A few weeks ago the newspapers reported, with plentiful use of those cautionary if not incredulous quotation marks resorted to by our press in such cases, certain "miraculous cures," "alleged" to have happened at the grave of a Catholic priest who was buried some sixty years ago...
...ON THE RESTORATION OF VALUES ONE of the Jesuit scientists who throughout the world occupy leading positions in the observation and study of the physical forces of the universe, recently made some striking remarks in connection with the phenomena accompanying the earthquake in the north Atlantic sea-bed...
...cripples "were reported" as having recovered the use of their limbs...
...The newspapers spread the news of these things before tens of millions of readers...
...What happened to that ship may, we think, be linked, at least for the purpose we have in mind, with what happened in Wall Street...
...but at least we may offer a few tentative suggestions...
...In between earthquake shocks and similar disturbances and outbreaks of the hidden and inner forces of nature, men and women continue to think and act as if this earth of ours (speeding through space as the ship goes through the sea) were a quite reliable and well-behaved contrivance...
...nevertheless, our attitude is not mere fatalism...
...So, too, when a tremendous shock to our social mechanism creates havoc and ruins many individuals, after the vibrations die away, society as a whole promptly and courageously rallies, plucks up its will power, straightens out the damaged machine as best lit can, and goes on again...
...it is continuing on its course, as the ship came into port after the earthquake shock, and as the fisher-folk (except for those who were drowned) will rebuild their cots and go on with their work, now that the flooding of the sea has subsided...
...In Newfoundland a tidal wave wrecked the homes and dashed out the lives of many fisher-folk...
...Whatever the verdict of the Catholic Church eventually may be as to the Maiden events (no worthwhile guess even is possible at this time) and whatever the verdict of the world outside the Church may be, today or finally, there can be no doubt that the great question, the supreme problem, of the supernatural has been brought to our attention-at least so far as the United States is concerned-in a more startling and widespread fashion than has ever happened before...
...namely, supernatural sanctity, the search after union with God because it is the first and foremost concern of man's brief yet supremely important business on earth...
...The earthquake at the bottom of the sea had produced a disturbance of the ocean such as the pebble would create in the pool, communicating a movement to the water, a force, which worked itself out In high tides, great waves and eccentric motion...
...Certainly there seems little or nothing that we can do to control such dangers...
...The vast machine shook, quivered, trembled violently...
...The Jesuit scientist in charge of the seismograph at Ford-ham University, when interviewed by the daily press, illustrated the sudden and disastrous behavior of the sea by likening it to the commotion that might be created in a pool into which a pebble had been thrown...
...One of the crew said that his sensation was as if the ship had been dragged backward...
...in certain of the cases physicians "endorsed" the truth of the reports...
...Only a few exceptional people, astronomers, physicists, geologists and the like, realize its instability, and the dangers surrounding its voyage, and the ultimate mystery of the voyage itself...
...A check came to the onward rushing of that mechanism...
...Blind people "claimed" that their sight had been restored...
...At bottom it seems solidly grounded in the active virtues of faith and fortitude...
...In Wall Street a shock was administered to the vast, intricate, complex economic and social mechanism of which all human beings today are a part...
...Perhaps what we are trying to express may be at least adumbrated by returning to the subject of the earthquake, and reflecting upon one of its minor incidents which seems to us to illustrate the point we desire to make...
...then the force that had seized it passed onward, and the ship followed, as before...
...also with what is happening as we write in the Maiden graveyard...
...but little children and a few humble people loved him because he was good and holy, and now his reputed sanctity has become, almost overnight, a power that is moving American society profoundly...
...The great ship, bearing with it a population equal to that of many a thriving town, and itself a triumphant work of mechanism, was driving on at top speed toward its destination, when all at once it was checked and held, as if in the grip of some invisible and mighty hand...
...to ask whether or not it is the sort of mechanism best adapted to enable us to live and labor in a truly human manner...
...it is merely our comments which connect them for the purpose of pointing out something lying behind or beneath them all, to which it may be worth while to direct our attention...
...In Wall Street we are told, the remedy needed is a restoration of the true and inherent values of the stocks...
...We are both crew and passenger upon this voyaging earth of ours, and we face our perils like true men...
Vol. 11 • December 1929 • No. 6
