Communications
COMMUNICATIONS WHY THE MORROW SUCCESS Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:—Apparently the correspondents are puzzled by the Dwight Morrow campaign. They have not quite sized up his possibilities....
...As he saw it his task was to examine, analyze, and report his findings as a basis for sound and reasonable relations between the two countries for the future...
...Francis X. Hennessy...
...But was the old system of teaching religion so utterly inadequate as some modern educators would have us believe...
...He has very competent men working at that now...
...A good old priest who taught us catechism about forty-five years ago used to say that the Holy Ghost was the main factor in keeping the Faith alive in us no matter how thoroughly we had mastered—not merely memorized— the catechism...
...Two principal obstacles to the success of his task seemed to lie in a financial system shattered by twenty years of revolution and in the intolerable church and state situation...
...Solid religious instruction, familiarity with Bible history, with the lives of the saints, with the history of the Church, and, most important of all, the religious atmosphere of the home— these were the means used by the Holy Ghost to work the miracle of keeping the Faith alive amidst the surrounding gloom of heresy and unbelief...
...The Mexicans, high and low, of all parties, never got away from the idea that he was still a Morgan partner though American Ambassador, and that he was building up through "occult Morgan interests" a colossal financial control of Mexico...
...We did learn the little catechism of Deharbe by heart...
...Then it would be spotted as news and followed up, generally with excellent results...
...One of the most remarkable things about the members of the Morgan family is their ability to escape publicity except in matters that are legitimately public...
...No one will deny that it is as necessary today as it was in the past...
...Neither on any Fourth of July nor on any other day will anyone dare to tell Americans, by word or deed, that their "consent of the governed" is nonsense or that it must be changed to "consent of governments...
...Was it from the consent of the governed in their conventions...
...And in this way, and in no other, will the Faith be kept alive in our own day...
...Did the priests and nuns, yes, and the fathers and mothers of those days really "expect their children to glean their own doctrines from the sometimes almost Latin wording of even so fine a summary as the Baltimore Catechism...
...In Mexico Mr...
...He came home as a mysterious person of great news interest to the press at home...
...The lambs were fed just as well in bygone days as they are now, except that they were deprived for several years longer than they are now of partaking of the Lamb of God in Holy Communion...
...My own experience, and I am sure that of hundreds of thousands of others, is quite to the contrary...
...We showed the nation being born of the American people by consent of the governed...
...FEED MY LAMBS Covington, Ky...
...There were no movies, no illustrated Sunday papers, no pagan magazines, to wreck our natural taste for wholesome reading...
...What a wealth of illustrations our good pastor used to have at hand to help our young minds to get in closer touch with the sublime truths of our holy Faith...
...William Franklin Sands...
...M. A. Walsh...
...J. J. Laux...
...Outside of his own attractive personality, Mr...
...Morrow did not believe that he had been sent there to defend any private interests no matter how suffering nor how legitimate...
...On all other days we are told that machinery has made obsolete these eternal truths...
...TO the Editor:—Under this caption W. Esdaile Byles, in The Commonweal of July 9, joins the ranks of those who, during the last decade or more, have been inveighing against the methods of teaching religion to children in the days of our fathers and grandfathers...
...May he or she become old to one of its readers...
...Morrow has two powerful assets: a very clever, intelligent and remarkably winning and sympathetic partner in Mrs...
...If we all celebrate that birthday every year, we shall have the consummation devoutly to be wished...
...As on the original Fourth, it finds discretion the better part of valor...
...In combination with the world oil market he brought about a truce in the oil situation...
...On our Fourth it does not voice its political creed that necessity of consent of the governed is nonsense...
...but we were never asked to memorize a jingle answer until that answer had been made as plain to us as human language could make it...
...It will be interesting to watch a straight campaign unhampered by bossism...
...the reputations given him by Americans in Mexico, by Mexicans, by the Mexican representatives of the same press all needed checking, and just at that moment he became a candidate for high political office with the sky the limit...
...Morrow, and that intangible thing which comes to him in the popular mind from being the father-in-law of a national hero...
...It was the one hour, in fact, to which we always looked forward with pleasure...
...You must obeji it...
...Your government has made it...
...On June 21, some of us commemorated the 142nd anniversary of the birth of our nation on June 21, 1788, at Concord, New Hampshire...
...What he probably saw was the fact that war between state and church made all construction impossible...
...The resident Americans who have remained there these past twenty years hoped for a powerful personality to defend their interests...
...Nobody knows anything about him except that he was a Morgan partner and what came up from Mexico about him while he was Ambassador...
...One most important factor in the successful teaching of religion in those days was the cooperation which the school and the church received from the home...
...It was soon noticed that if no thought was forthcoming, the question would be repeated later to some other correspondent...
...Perhaps our priests and teaching Brothers and Sisters do not get the whole-hearted cooperation from the home that their predecessors did...
...Bible stories and stories from the lives and legends of the saints enlivened every religion hour...
...No one in Mexico supposed that he has any particular liking for the Catholic Church in general or the Mexican church in particular...
...Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished...
...And that is about the only difference, as far as I can see, between the teaching of religion now and in the days of our fathers and grandfathers...
...Nowhere do we hear its familiar words—"This is the law...
...They could not see the absurdity of such a charge...
...It seems that the Faith was taught us so poorly that only a miracle of the Holy Ghost kept it alive...
...The news men soon found out that he was the keenest newspaperman among them, and that the surest place for a news story was the American embassy...
...Let us hope and pray that the Spirit of Truth will keep on working this miracle of grace even after the old methods of teaching the truths of faith have been discarded...
...Not that he ever gave anything out...
...Most of them prefer the attitude toward publicity of the hereditary head of the house...
...Outside of their circle of intimates no one knows anything about them...
...It is short but every line is wide awake...
...But in spite of this inestimable advantage enjoyed by the child of today, I doubt whether the Faith is more alive in it than it was in the child of a generation ago...
...Morrow was a centre of keen interest...
...THE GOVERNED New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—Now passeth again the Fourth of July...
...Would that every day were a Fourth of July...
...Our parents knew their catechism and could explain it to us...
...He is either "the best candidate who ever ran or the most over-touted...
...As in 1776, it feels that no Fourth of July is a day on which to tell Americans, by word or deed, that consent of the governed is an absurd fallacy...
...There was a Goffine or a Lives of the Saints or both in nearly every Catholic home, and they were not permitted to accumulate dust...
...There are few ambassadors who have been served by their official subordinates as enthusiastically...
...Memory of an America that was and shall come again stirs restlessly when some sonorous voice proclaims the truth that no government can derive lawful power from any source save "consent of the governed...
...For one day, at least, the spirit moves us to put "prosperity" in the background and we do make much ado about "liberty...
...The reason is easy...
...For a brief moment on a summer day, the loud speaker is resonant with those quaint old truths that men get their rights from their God and create their government to protect those rights...
...Instead, in many hearts, the old truths stir the old cry, "From whom did government derive the power to make it the law...
...For one day, at least, the Methodist political party is completely silent...
...Hence the Ambassador's strength with the correspondents in Mexico...
...It was his custom to ask some one of them (particularly some newcomer) casually, in the daily press conferences, what he thought of something or other...
...Howard, R. I. TO the Editors:—Contributors in the July 9 issue says:"W...
...And there was a Catholic weekly there too, and some illustrated Catholic monthly...
...And some of us wonder whether most of us sense the curious effect of those truths on each recurring Fourth of July...
...Yet annually, even in leap years, many of us do give a brief moment to thought of those truths on which we achieved so much in an almost forgotten past...
...He probably looked on the impasse as a public nuisance to be abated, and so took his part in bringing about an accord...
...P. S. Feed my Lambs is the title of Byles's article...
...For one day, at least, the Tory cry of the Revolution is silenced...
...He labored incessantly to remedy the first, to the discomfort of anyone who did not want it remedied...
...Morgan partners—with occasional exceptions—do not advertise...
...Esdaile Byles is a new contributor to the magazine...
Vol. 12 • August 1930 • No. 14
