Home The Book STL Religion Research Project Contact

THE  RESTLESS  FLAME,  DANIEL  LORD,  S.J.

Thinking Big in a Parochial World


Chapter 6    Chapter 8


EXTRA   MATERIAL

Queen's Work Magazine January 1923

Chapter Seven - 1920-1924
Studying Theology
and The Jesuit with Magic Hands

The Ten Commandments: the 1923 Movie

In 1923 Cecil B. DeMille released his epic silent film The Ten Commandments.  According to Lord, in the 1920s Hollywood made one of its great discoveries, that biblical pictures simply never fail at the box office, and that the Scriptures are the richest of story material on earth.1  Although very expensive to produce, The Ten Commandments made lots of money.  Lord believed that criticism from some Protestant churches about non-religious movies and the threat of censorship encouraged Hollywood to consider religious themes.

Lord, in Detroit for a convention, found himself bored.  He skipped out to go see the movie.

Then upon the film Mr. DeMille produced a modern miracle of the Red Sea.  Audiences sat aghast as the waters opened, the Israelites walked through, and then the sea flooded back over the Egyptian hosts.  A favorite dinner-table discussion of those days was how Mr. DeMille had produced what seemed to be a duplicate of Jehovah’s amazing miracle.

Yet when Moses walked up the Mount, I forgot all that had gone before.  In spirit I was on Mount Sinai at the tremendous moment of history when God handed to the sons of men His great Ten Commandments and hedged them round with strong stone walls symbolized in the Tables of the Law.2

In making the film, DeMille consulted a Rabbi.  Lord later recounted:

Incidentally, he [De Mille] told me at the time how he and Jeanie Macpherson had gone to the most celebrated Jewish seminary in the country to consult the most learned modern rabbi on the commandments and Moses’ connection with them.  When the rabbi had finished, there was nothing left of the commandments and little of Moses.  He was a modernist of modernists and he had little faith left for Moses and regarded the story of the giving of the Ten Commandments as myth and folklore.  Said Mr. De Mille, So when Jeanie and I got out into the open air, we paused on the seminary steps, looked at each other, realized that the rabbi had shot our story to pieces, and that there remained nothing to film.  Said Jeanie, ‘Let’s stick to the Bible; it’s a much better story.’  I nodded and we did.3

The film had two parts: Part 1—Moses receiving the Commandments, and Part 2—modern people breaking them.  Lord saw the second part as anti-climatic.

“The Blessedness of Heresy”

In October of 1922 The Catholic World published Lord’s article: The Blessedness of Heresy.4  Lord used a catchy title to draw in his reader; a trick he would use in future writing.  However, in the article he never explained the title unless his point was that heresy made the Church stronger in the long run.  Give time its chance, and time will corrode any heresy until it falls into red rust.5  Also Lord did not go into detail about specific heretical ideas nor did he define the term ‘heresy.’

In the article Lord used the word ‘heresy’ broadly for everything from Arianism, Novatianism, and Donatism to Protestantism, modern Science, Historical-criticism, Philosophy, and New Thought.  Keep in mind that Pius X had issued his papal encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis in 1907 which condemned modernism and a wide range of intellectual currents some of which, such as historical-criticism, would be later accepted by the Church.

Daniel Lord on Writing

For writing is almost more than anything I can think of a habit.  A writer never finds writing easy.  It is simple nonsense to pretend that even the most deft and fluent writer doesn’t find his work a chore.  Each time a man sits down to write, he groans.  Almost anything can turn him aside.  Almost any distraction is welcome and welcomed.  To put one’s mind on precisely the right subject, to visualize the audience for whom that subject should be treated, to block out the treatment that seems called for, to break through the sound barrier that blocks off his first written words, to pick the introduction that has an instant grip, and then to continue the laborious work of finding the precise words for the precise thought—it’s a job, and nobody with sense pretends it isn’t.6

Theological Studies

In fall 1920 Lord started his four year study of theology at the Jesuit university in St. Louis: academic years 1920/1921, through 1923/1924.  His room on the second-floor of the now-gone DeSmet Hall faced West Pine Avenue.  (Today a pedestrian mall.)  He could hear the traffic below.  Grade school kids walked by at noon and called to him.

The spot in which I spent my years of theology was a little typical of the whole of my life.  My room opened on the peace and silence of a Jesuit house of study.  The windows opened on the fast currents of West Pine Boulevard, the Moose Club which staged parties lasting far into the night, two down-at-the-heel but enormous boarding houses in front of which parked jittery jalopies and through which raced tribes of transients.  As so often in life, I was caught between the charm of cloistered studiousness and the rush and tumble of life.7
One studied philosophy to understand human life. One studied theology to grip the fullness of the priestly life. Philosophy was walking with the God of nature, the God of reasonable truth, in the cool, almost abstract light of the human mind. Theology was walking with the God of revelation, the God who spoke through prophets and lawgivers and the world’s most beautiful book and the fascinating lips of Christ Jesus the Lord.8
Yet though all this was true, theology could be pretty dull and the classes would be conducted under the patronage of St Anesthesia.9

In spring 1921 Lord completed his first year of theology which covered Apologetics.

I recall that, at the end of the course, Father Robert Johnston turned to the class and said: Do you see how anyone, facing this dovetailing of Catholic truth to human instincts, common sense, and the longings of the heart, could doubt it?  I am sure that mine was only one of the heads that nodded in complete agreement.

I love religion, said a charming actress once; but I cannot tell you how I hate dogma.

That was as silly as if she had said, I am fascinated by the beauty of the human body, but I wish it didn’t have a skeleton.  The human body without that strong structural factor which is the skeleton would be a horrible suet pudding, an unjellied jelly, a building that crashed because it had no steel supports.  Dogma in theology is as essential as the great natural laws that underlie science, the powerful codes that make law a unified and protective armor for human living, the findings of the great physicians and surgeons which give medicine its power for our good.10

Lord described his studies:

Hebrew baffled me. I never made head or tail of it.  Moral theology under the charming and brilliant Father Francis O’Boyle had the instant value of preparation for the confessional.  The basic truths of Christianity, the validity of the Bible, and the treatise on Christ and on His Church, all seemed to me to clamor for translation into the idiom of the people.  I could feel that I was storing up endless material for sermons—I played with the idea of Armchair Theology to parallel my little ‘Armchair Philosophy,’ but never, to my lifelong regret, settled myself to do it.11
Simultaneously we took two years of dogmatic theology, the teaching of Christ, the revelations of God throughout the course of human history, and the decisions of the Church, speaking with the voice of God; and moral theology, the law of Christ applied to human conduct.12

The first step was ordination to the Subdiaconate at College Church.

It is a solemn moment when the name of the young man is read out and he steps from the semicircle of his fellows and walks toward the bishop with a freely spoken, Adsum!  That simple Latin word, Here I am, has long been considered as the external expression of the clerical vow of chastity.  It ends the young man’s career in one state of life and precipitates him into the new career, so utterly different in all its aspects.  He has joined the consecrated ranks of those men whose total life is dedicated to God and to the service of human souls.  He has become by unretractable purpose God’s man.13

He was asked by the pastor of Resurrection parish in Oak Park to do his first mass there because in his youth he had taken the St. Catherine’s choir and dramatic society and put on shows that brought in the first money that was used to start the parish.

At the end of each year of philosophy and theology we sat for one hour before a board of four professors who questioned us in an oral examination.  At the end of our course in moral theology we were examined minutely on the law of God, and a series of sample confessions were made to us to test our ability as future confessors.  The third year of theology terminated in a full hour of difficult quiz.  Then the course rounded off in the fourth year when for two solid hours we were expected to be able to explain, present, defend, and know the chief objections against our Catholic theology and the great scholastic philosophy.  For this final examination we were allowed four months of preparation.  The four months were a time to revel in.  No class.  Plenty of time.  Books at our disposal.  Professors whom we could consult.  . . . They were delightful days.  Never again was I to know that expansive leisure, that immediate incentive to prepare my mind and muster my knowledge for so definite a use.14

The Mirror of Truth: A Play in Pantomime

In 1922 Lord and Egan produced The Mirror of Truth: A Play in Pantomime at St. Elizabeth’s Deafmute Institute.15  It was later published in 1947.  Although a pantomime, a Storyteller explains the action in unrhymed verse for those with hearing.

  

Synopsis

A beautiful and vain girl is harsh to her overworked mother and little sister.  One day the girl and her companions go to a folk dance where the Herald comes and announces that the Prince is seeking a bride.  The girl and her friends go to the King.  The Prince is enthralled by her beauty, but the King says she must stand before the Mirror of Truth to prove her beauty.  As the girl stands before the mirror; a fairy steps out of the mirror.  But the girl is not beautiful of soul and so ugly dwarves come from the mirror.  The fairy laments: She is hideous!  You see what creatures haunt her secret soul!

The Prince pleads for her and asks for golden shoes, a cloak, and a purse of gold so the girl can go out for a year to purchase beauty.  The girl leaves with the items.  After long weary travels she has not found beauty.  Then she comes upon a slave girl and buys her freedom.  She comes upon a poor beggar and gives up the cloak.  When she comes upon May Day dancers who will not let a poor girl join them, she gives the girl her golden shoes.

At the end of the year the fairy leads the girl back to the court:

  

          No longer proud, no longer peacock vain,

          But humble, meek, and with a gentle heart.

  

At the court she is brought again before the Mirror of Truth.  This time lovely creatures step from the mirror.

  

          And so my friends, let beauty dwell within.

          So says the ancient teller of this tale.

          Fair face with ugly soul are badly wed.

          We purchase beauty with unselfishness.

  

The Prince claims the girl for his bride.16

Alma Mater: Mother of Youth

In spring of 1923 the Provincial asked Lord to do a pageant for St. Mary’s College in Kansas.  Lord eagerly agreed and wrote Alma Mater: Mother of Youth on the meaning of Catholic education.  (This show would eventually have several versions named Youth and Pageant of Youth)

Egan agreed to do the scenery.  Egan drew out everything so that local workers could build it.  Lord wrote the script so that others could direct it.  Over Easter break they went to St. Mary’s for five days to get the production started in a bare gym.  They did not see the actual show.17

This style of production is called a ‘masque.’  Masques originated in the middles ages and became popular in the Europe in later centuries.  Masques involved acting, singing, music, and dancing with elaborate stage scenery.  Mother of Youth honors three mothers: The Earthly Mother, Mary the Mother of God, and Alma Mater.  Alma Mater is an expression of the tremendous love of God for man, and like that love the love of a Mother follows man from his crib to the very gates of heaven.18


Synopsis


Act I

In Scene 1, The Battlements of Heaven, four ANGELS pose as a Greek frieze as trumpets announce the DANCE OF ANGELS GUARDIAN.  The ANGELS rejoice over the birth of YOUTH.  (YOUTH is not Jesus.)  HEAVENLY WISDOM and HEAVENLY LOVE enter.

12 -16 little CHERUBS dance to Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker Suite of Tchaikovsky.  Six ANGELS in colors stand with the BLESSED VIRGIN [Mary] to create a rainbow.

She blesses the YOUTH as a shower of roses fall.  The ANGEL HERALD warns that EVIL has planned the death of EARTHLY MOTHER.  EARTHLY MOTHER prays that Mary will protect her son.  BLESSED VIRGIN tells HEAVENLY WISDOM to go and protect the boy. BLESSED VIRGIN gives HEAVENLY WISDOM her veil, and designates her as ALMA MATER: Mother of Youth.

In Scene 2, The Inferno, EVIL calls to his DEMONS with scimitars: Dance, my darling minions, dance the night; shadow your partners be, and sulphurous flames your perfumes.  EVIL calls for his companions: IGNORANCE, DISEASE, and SIN, to strike EARTHLY MOTHER and snatch YOUTH.

At The Home of Youth, Scene 3, EARTHLY MOTHER sits with her son YOUTH.  EVIL, DISEASE, IGNORANCE, and SIN enter.  DISEASE strikes EARTHLY MOTHER who cries out: In the hour of death, Mary, protect my boy.  EVIL exalts: She is gone, the bulwark of his soul! . . . Seize Youth, for she, his mother, now is dead.19

The DEMONS try to take YOUTH.  ALMA MATER gives him strength to break free.

Act II

Scene 1, The Campus opens with Folk Dancers, Tumblers, and a Morris Dance.  YOUTH cries out Brothers, Contempt, with all his sullen sneers, is not for us.  We’re Alma Mater’s sons.20

ALMA MATER enters.  EVIL, IGNORANCE, SIN appear as wrestlers.  They challenge YOUTH who accepts.  However CONTEMPT taunts YOUTH and YOUTH steps aside.  CONTEMPT wrestles IGNORANCE.  ALMA MATER offers her veil to help, but CONTEMPT rejects it and IGNORANCE wins.

YOUTH then wrestles IGNORANCE and takes a fall.  ALMA MATER offers her veil which YOUTH takes and defeats IGNORANCE.  EVIL sulks off with his companions, vowing to return.

In Scene 2, The Altar of Consecration, YOUTH is a squire in a chapel, preparing to be knighted.  ALMA MATER urges Love the good and pure, and serve the helpless ones with gentle hands.  Lift high the sword of truth, and make it bite into the mail of Evil. . . . Forth shalt thou go, my Knight and champion.21  Armorers forge a sword and dancers bring it to YOUTH.

Act III

Scene 1 is The Gage of Battle.  ALMA MATER sits enthroned to the Prelude and March from Die Meistersinger by Wagner.  Armored Knights with plumed helmets enter as Trumpeters announce that ALMA MATER will make YOUTH a knight.

The knight AMBITION arrives and proposes an alliance with YOUTH to conquer to world.  YOUTH welcomes him despite ALMA MATER’S misgivings.  SIN and DEMONS enter in disguise as Turkish Knights with Scimitars.  SLAVES with treasures and PLEASURE with 20 Oriental Dancing girls enter to entice.

AMBITION offers friendship.  ALMA MATER tells YOUTH to look into his eyes.  YOUTH pulls the robe off of AMBITION to reveal him as EVIL.  EVIL challenges YOUTH to battle.  ALMA MATER urges, Go forth, my knights, dauntless and unafraid!22

In Scene 3, The Return from Victory ALMA MATER follows the offstage battle.  EVIL, completely spent, enters with POVERTY, a cutthroat with handcuffs: We are defeated, and our forces flee. . . Youth sweeps us on like a herd of frightened kine, lashed with herdsman’s whip.  . . I’ll strike him to the heart, through Alma Mater!23

EVIL and POVERTY rush at ALMA MATER, hold her, and chain her, then exit.  To trumpets, DANCERS and KNIGHTS enter in triumph followed by YOUTH carrying the helmet of EVIL.

YOUTH sees ALMA MATER and cuts her chains with his sword.  She is crowned to a triumphal chorus.

In The Battlements of Heaven, Scene 3, HERALD announces that YOUTH has died.  Trumpets sound.  ANGELS, HEAVENLY LOVE, the BLESSED VIRGIN, and YOUTH’s EARTHLY MOTHER enter.  She hears the news: My son, my little boy, my laddie, Youth!  Coming in triumph, bearing the victor’s crown.24

ALMA MATER enters and removing the veil again becomes HEAVENLY WISDOM.  YOUTH enters and sees his EARTHLY MOTHER.

Slowly he lifts his arms toward her and then, with a rush, leaps up the stairs and flings himself at her feet kneeling and burying his head in her dress, crying Mother,: and holding this pose as, very slowly, THE CURTAIN FALLS.25

Many of Lord’s shows had dance scenes involving evil forces such as the dance of demons with scimitars in this show.  His 1920 Alma Mater had its Dance of CHOLERA and DEATH on a stage lit with yellow and green.  Later shows would have BACCHANALIAN DANCERS and AZTEC DEVIL DANCERS.  One wonders if such dance scenes were the most thrilling part of Lord’s shows.

Water Rheostats

The principle of water rheostats is actually quite simple.  A wire bringing DC current goes into a bucket of salt water.  On the other side of the bucket is another wire taking the current to the light.  Salt water conducts electricity.  When the two wires are all the way in the bucket a full current goes to the lights so they are brighter.  When the wires are lifted so only part of the wires are in the water the light receives less current.  By adjusting the height one has a full range of brightness for the lights.  Water rheostats are still used today such as on some generators.

First Mass

Father Pernin did the preaching at Lord’s first Mass in Chicago, which was a High Mass sung by Lord. Afterwards there was a small family breakfast, but no big reception.  When he returned to St. Louis the now Father Lord stopped by to tell his superior Bernard J. Otting, S.J. and to thank him for his kindness and asked for a blessing.  When Father Otting found out that he had sung a High Mass he was quite upset because the custom was that a priest was first supposed to say a Low Mass first.  Otting snapped, This is unprecedented.  I certainly would never have given you permission.  I doubt if any superior would have.26



NOTES



Chapter 6    Chapter 8

  

Copyright 2021 Stephen Werner