Communications
COMMUNICATIONS OUR ERROR New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—A journal which is so highly regarded in the Churchman office as The Commonweal will, I am sure, wish to correct an error in its leading...
...The truth is, of course, that to the smart aleck school of unbelievers all forms of faith look more or less alike...
...Your "hundred Leagues" means of course a series of attempts to cure admitted defects: to find, if possible, a league which "could hope to regulate" any and every imperialism...
...Charles C. Marshall...
...W. L. Scott senses the opprobrium heaped upon adherents to the Catholic Church when they are referred to as "Roman Catholics...
...Cummins is not the editor of the Churchman...
...This was immediately after the Council of Trent...
...Gilmore's article in the May 28 issue aroused urges me to place this letter in interrogatory form...
...But some of us cannot see this...
...Better no league at all than one which perpetuates injustices by guaranteeing immunities to the chief offenders...
...To do otherwise is to imply that they are castaways, that they have lost the fundamentals: the creed, the priesthood, the sacraments and the Holy Scriptures...
...Having long since enjoyed the fine journal which Mr...
...However, the scintillating interest that Mr...
...These I would fain bring into the Church by understanding and helping...
...But now see how he turns on the hands that patted him...
...A way out must be found, because the two things which the longed-for "Brotherhood of Nations" needs to possess are, both the intention and the strength to regulate imperial outlawry: an outlawry which denies the equality of sovereignties and which violates the rights, titles and boundaries of neighbor nations...
...In dealing with the case of Dr...
...The teachings that Mencken sneers at either directly in his own editorials or indirectly in the articles he prints from other writers are common to all Christians...
...in the catechism of the Council of Trent, the Church's official statement of doctrine, the term Roman Catholic never once appears...
...Dr...
...and Catholics whose faith is in many respects just as fundamentalist as that of the morons aforesaid can expect from such writers preferential treatment only as long as it pleases the writers to give it...
...A way will yet be found, one which shall of necessity consider big banking, big business and all other "humdrum business facts," not in order to yield control to them, but that they also may be regulated according to what is just...
...PEACE IN INSTALMENTS Dorchester, Mass...
...So long as the attack is directed against the Methodist and Baptist morons we cannot sense the implied thrust at ourselves...
...To these, believing as they do, the concession of the one word that implies universality to one communion alone is a direct refutation of history and of fact...
...Cummins is editor of the Chronicle, a monthly journal published in Poughkeepsie...
...Belloc's strictures, calling attention to the fact that before the machinations of the Westminster crown lawyers, Pope Pius IV, in what is sometimes called his creed, gave the official title of his Church as the "Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church...
...We sincerely regret this error, primarily because it is inexcusable...
...For there is, as there must be, somewhere the moral right "to fix the limits within which a nation's (or an individual's) business and financial ambitions must be content to reside...
...The whole educated world knows that this unfortunate title was adopted after the severance of the British tie...
...For saying something like this in your columns once before, and for making a prediction, by the way, which this month's Mercury fulfils, I have been held up to scorn recently by a correspondent of yours from some place far from Boston—Los Angeles, I believe...
...It seems obvious, then, that the historic remarks of Mr...
...I wonder if we find it just as amusing now to have the Mercury giving place to an article on Catholic seminary life which makes fun of the most sacred beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church...
...if "doting" means trying to be courteous in religious controversy no matter what may be the provocation to be otherwise...
...if "doting" means trying to do what Our Blessed Lord commanded us to do, and what the Church continually teaches us to do, namely to love our neighbor, our neighbor being, according to the catechism which I studied in my youth, "all mankind, even those who injure us or differ from us in religion"—if "doting" means all this, then the gentleman stops short of the truth, for I "dote" not only upon Baptists and Methodists but upon Episcopalians, Holy Jumpers, Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists and all the rest of those who are the "other sheep" outside the fold of the one true Church...
...Boston, Mass...
...The Pope's decree seems to indicate that the use of the word "Roman" is not meaningless or opprobrious if it follows the word "Catholic...
...These I "dote" upon, trying to do it in the spirit of Christ and His Church, toward the end that they all may be one...
...The title, as promulgated by Pope Pius IV, is now used officially by his Church...
...In the Anglican, communion, there are thousands of men and women well versed in history who out of the welter of hate and blood of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries see or feel that they see the Church of England emerge scarred and impoverished, but still Catholic in all essentials...
...Belloc's comment in the March Atlantic Monthly on my use of the term "Roman Catholic" in my article to which Mr...
...New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—Being an earnest and frequent reader of Communications in The Commonweal I well know that it is not a question bureau...
...Many good Christians feel that they must use the term "Roman Catholic" for conscience sake...
...Cummins to the Churchman.—The Editors...
...Denis A. McCarthy...
...Alexander C. Cummins, who criticized Dr...
...Cody at once conflict...
...Christopher I. FitzGerald...
...It would be much appreciated if an answer to this question were offered...
...In the May Atlantic I replied to Mr...
...For they hold that the unity of the Catholic Church is broken—and that there are several bodies which are indeed Catholic...
...TO the Editor:—Peace in Instalments, an interesting Commonweal editorial, April 16, contains these words: "British imperialism, for instance, is something which a hundred Leagues of Nations could not hope to regulate...
...We were all highly amused, you will remember, when, a few years ago, the Mercury was holding up to ridicule the "morons" of the Bible belt, the Methodists and Baptists of the South...
...The gentleman accuses me of the awful crime of "doting on Baptists and Methodists...
...I have read with interest the letter of W. L. Scott on the terms "Catholic" and "Roman Catholic...
...July 16, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 3°5 "ROMAN CATHOLIC" Millbrook, N. Y. TO the Editor:—I note in The Commonweal, June 25, the letter of Mr...
...In my use of the term "Roman Catholic" I intended no discourtesy...
...Selden P. Delany, The Commonweal quotes, apparently with approval, an editorial from the Churchman, but adds: "that this comment is not wholly laudatory, however, follows from a public statement made by the Churchman's editor, the Reverend Dr...
...To deny the possibility of such a league is to take counsel of despair...
...Scott and Mr...
...F. A. Reeve...
...In the following issue, July 2, appears John R. Cody's statement "the historic fact is that Pope Pius IV promulgating the decrees of the Council of Trent, November 13, 1564, solemnly designated his Church as the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church...
...A. R. K. MORE "DOTING" Arlington, Mass...
...To the mind of the writer the appellation "Roman Catholic" is odious—for reasons never accounted for...
...TO the Editor:—You will be interested, I am sure, in the latest issue of the Mercury...
...This is the test of efficiency in international cooperation...
...W. L. Scott, quoting Mr...
...Belloc was replying...
...Scott proceeds to attest that...
...Will you give me the chance to say that the gentleman does not go far enough...
...No fairminded controversialist would use a term which his opponents considered meaningless or opprobrious, once they could be assured in that respect by due authority...
...COMMUNICATIONS OUR ERROR New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—A journal which is so highly regarded in the Churchman office as The Commonweal will, I am sure, wish to correct an error in its leading editorial of the issue of July 2, 1930...
...Is it so only when it precedes that word...
...With regard to the present League, that statement is true, but why "pick on" British imperialism...
...Your statement should be expanded to include every imperialism, and a reason furnished, namely, that the power of the League is now actually centralized in the imperialists, so that they might hold a whiphand over the little fellows, and not, as needs to be, the other way around...
...TO the Editor:—I am an Anglican, what in the United States we call an Episcopalian...
...Catholics should feel affronted just as much as Protestants at the Mercury's treatment of them...
...Shipler edits, only the haste which makes waste led us to pass the error by which the New York Times assigned Dr...
...But cheer up...
...Mencken in his anti-moron mood was looked upon by some of us Catholics as being a sort of non-Catholic champion of the Catholic Church—another Brann, another Windle—and his magazine as being in the same class as the Iconoclast, or even The Commonweal itself...
...To deny this is to admit economic determinism as the supreme fact and the supreme law of human life...
...The Commonweal would do well to make known American opinion in the matter...
...If "doting" means a desire to give all people regardless of their religion a square deal...
...Guy Emery Shipler...
...Delany's use of 'Roman practices, ornaments and paraphernalia,' accused him, etc...
...I believe that there are very few who intend any discourtesy or who are misled by lack of charity, and that there are thousands who look back with longing hearts to the great ages when the Church was one and undivided, before the holy spell was broken...
...The error was originally made, apparently, on the copy desk of the New York Times, where some one misread "Chronicle" for "Churchman...
Vol. 12 • July 1930 • No. 11
