Communications
COMMUNICATIONS FEED MY LAMBS New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—The direct appreciation of what I wrote under this title by M. A. Walsh is flattering, and I thank him. But I am particularly pleased...
...Father Laux's pastor chose, as we did, "to unfold to the child's delighted gaze the philosophy of man's creation and then to crystallize it into words which the child could carry to life's end...
...and how effective the lessons it would teach for present use if only applied...
...To quote in part: "Look honestly at the situation among Catholics...
...C. J. Cannon...
...One difficulty today is that a ponderous force is spent by the Catholic press against prohibition and no corresponding effort is used to advance total abstinence and sobriety in the face of all odds...
...Charles J. Byrnes...
...The Catholic Total Abstinence Union had 10,000 members and temperance rallies were popular...
...Can Father Laux help us solve the problem for a great overgrown metropolitan area, like New York, where the homes have been pulled down, leaving families to crowd into two- and three-room apartments...
...A parallel between our country and these two countries with populations probably no larger than some of our states is difficult of conception...
...That is the cooperation which the school and the church should receive from the home...
...A short magazine article cannot be an exhaustive treatise...
...It is difficult indeed to understand the attitude of some of the "prominent laity" in regard to the recreation of priests...
...The same wet press that offered modification with light wines and beers a few years ago, is now advocating strong liquor on a Canadian plan...
...PRIESTS AND GOLF New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—Your comment on the very sane view of the Homiletic Review regarding priests and golf, had something of the exhilaration of a good drive down the fairway in it...
...W. ESDAILE BYLES...
...Among the features of such a volume would be a chronicle of the greatness of the prelate leaders that graced this unselfish movement, the urgent necessity for a Catholic society of its kind, the vast missionary work needed to maintain its working force, the numerous and disappointing lapses in its membership, the cases of poverty and distress that were relieved, sometimes only temporarily, the many rebuffs that befell its advocates, the unpopularity of the cause in most places, and the hopelessness, almost, of it all from the point of view of the actual worker in the cause of sobriety...
...Twenty years ago no group was more actively laboring for temperance...
...LIKE A RAM'S HORN Pittsburgh, Pa...
...These families have not much space for the books and magazines he mentions, nor any quiet place to read them...
...We are told to copy Norway's model law...
...In this connection, however, it is well for priests to be mindful of Luke, xiv, I: "And it came to pass, when Jesus went into the house of one of the chief of the Pharisees, on the sabbath day, to eat bread, that they watched him...
...and then Canada's system (in operation not as long as prohibition here) is offered as the pattern for excellence in liquor control...
...It is pertinent here to compliment The Commonweal for its presentation of the wholesome differences of opinion on the liquor question that appear in its Communications column...
...With the richness of his happy childhood experience to draw from, he might well write you an article on that phase of the subject...
...There can be no harm in earnest discussion of the liquor question, but it is difficult to keep pace with the new theories advanced from day to day...
...It is not easy to analyze this attitude, certainly it has much of the stuff of the Puritan and Methodist about it...
...TO the Editor:—Under the heading Like a Ram's Horn in the March 5 issue of The Commonweal, conditions of today are made to appear drab by reason of a comparison with an ideally pictured life before prohibition had extended the field of its operations so as to include the entire nation...
...Opposed to it, however, is the fact that Our Lord gave over His work upon the earth into the hands of men, and so long as this arrangement stands there will be need of proper recreation for them...
...Father Laux introduces another principle in education, which is, at least, as important as the one I wrote about...
...In Covington, Kentucky, there probably should be little excuse for families not supplying this cooperation...
...But I am particularly pleased with the criticism of Reverend J. J. Laux, of Covington, Ky., for he has endorsed in detail, with a lively warmth, of which I am incapable, the very principle I tried to express...
...As in the case of other professional men, it is the priest's personal concern as to what form his recreation shall take and the opinion which would deny him God's sunshine and green grass and dazzling water hazards is, as you so rightly observe, to be ignored...
...A 100,000 membership at its peak, including juveniles, was a small representation of Catholic strength for a cause as worthy as total abstinence: rather, it would seem that a small body was let attempt heruclean work...
...Besides that Father has to leave before dawn to travel on subways to his work, and if Mother and Big Sister did not leave soon after to help make or advertise the latest "labor-saving device," there would be no money to pay the rent (at $20 plus per room), or to buy the labor-saving devices, which are essential in their substitute for a home...
...Where the principle of prohibition was first denied by the wets, now we have an endorsement of the principle applicable to separate states instead of to the whole country as a unit...
...How can Catholic people, or any other people, profit by a course that would take away prohibition and leave them with no active combatant against a beverage which contains a drug as its sole inducement and charm...
...If that pastor is still living, I should like to know him...
...We were never asked," he says, "to memorize a single answer until that answer had been made as plain to us as human language could make it...
...Nobody forgot that drunkenness is a sin, etc...
...to crystallize it, as I had expressed it before, "into the exact words of the catechism...
...Even prohibition is more popular today among Catholics than total abstinence was twenty years ago...
...As one who loses all interest in the score at about the seventeenth hole, I thank you sincerely...
...What a thoroughly interesting volume it would be, that would record a history of the struggles, achievements and disappointments of the Catholic Total Abstinence movement in America...
...They seem to wish to raise the question as to whether priests really have any right to the recreations of which a gentleman avails himself...
...Made specific by the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment by the composite states of the union...
Vol. 12 • August 1930 • No. 16
