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THE  RESTLESS  FLAME,  DANIEL  LORD,  S.J.

Thinking Big in a Parochial World


Chapter 14    Chapter 16


EXTRA   MATERIAL

Chaper Fifteen - 1931-1932
Summer Schools of Catholic Action:
Dare We Be Different?

Pamphlet Sales

Pamphlets sales, the bread and butter of the Queen’s Work publishing and income generation, continued to grow.


Pamphlet Sales

1927         154,075

1928         289,902

1929         273,102

1930         389,849

1931         442,242

1932         508,519

1933         440,205

1934         576,616

1935         560,430

Total      3,634,9401


These numbers do not include such pamphlets as The ABC of Sodality Organization and the many pamphlets given away.  Magazine subscriptions also increased.


Magazine Subscriptions

1926         40,000

1927         19,000

1928         11,000

1929         25,000

1930         36,000

1931         56,000

1932         65,000

1933         73,000

1934         77,000

1935         84,0002

A Triduum for the Holy Father

The Central Office coordinated an offering of masses for the Pope.  Sodalists made a Triduum of three Masses and Holy Communion within the octave before the feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8) for the intentions of the Holy Father, Pius XI.  The numbers show that sometimes they went to mass but did not receive communion.  The norm that one should generally take communion at Mass was still years away.  Each year on Christmas Eve the totals were cabled to the Pope.  An artistic document followed in the mail.


                   Masses         Communions          Schools         Parishes         States

1931         254,278         230,865         542       160          41

1932         448,945         367,964         770         29         44

1933         367,863         314,618         660         28         44

1934         390,688         347,521         720         31         44

1935         482,838         423,191         835         30         44

Totals    1,944,612       1,684,159


Each year the Vatican sent a thank you letter signed by Cardinal Pacelli, who would go on to be Pope Pius XII.

On the Train

Lord traveled extensively by train.  Three or more trips a month were not uncommon.  Lord used the time to write.

If I wrote the first booklet on a California-bound train, I was setting a precedent for future work.  Many another would be written on trains, or ships, or in railroad stations as I waited for a change of cars started perhaps in Chicago, continued on the train for New York, and ended as I went on to the South.  In the depression days the almost-empty Pullmans meant I could write without interrupting the quiet of fellow passengers; there were almost no fellow passengers.  I have carried a portable typewriter for over a quarter of a century.

. . . 

Incidentally, I have often wondered what difference it would have made had I not given that time during my summer vacations to learn to type.  I am, as I have often stated, the world's most inaccurate typist.  But having mastered the touch system (great writers, I was to discover, invariably write hunt-and-peck) I could really grind out copy when I set myself to it.  As my handwriting is completely illegible, as no editor on earth could have possibly read a handwritten manuscript, as I could copy my own scrawled notes and rough-hewn manuscripts at a swift pace, and as my thought processes could continue without the slightest energy expended on the problem of typing, the blessed fact that I constantly am accompanied by a typewriter and that I am its master has made just all the difference to the quantity if not the quality of my writing.3

Two Pullman Story Told by Daniel Lord

Literary Values

Across the aisle of the Pullman a young man was trying vainly to interest an obviously synthetic blonde in books.

It’s a magnificent book, really, he said, of a favorite.  Unique, different, very deep.

Gosh, it must be! she yawned.  Didn’t you say it cost four dollars?

Don’t Look for Trouble

A group of people playing cards in the Pullman were bothered by two people smoking further down the car so one of them rang for the porter.

Porter, may we smoke in the Pullman?  He demanded when the smiling Negro appeared.

The porter shook his head violently.

No indeed, suh.  It’s against the rules.

Well, said the traveler, indignantly motioning toward the offending man and woman who were puffing contentedly on their cigarettes, those two down there are smoking.

Well you see, suh, it’s like this, replied the porter, the epitome of tact: that lady and gentlemen didn’t ask me.4

Pullman railroad cars were made in Chicago by the Pullman Palace Car Company.  The key to the Pullman sleeper was pairs of double seats that faced each other.  Each pair held four adults.  At night these seats became a bed for two people.  Above that another bed folded down for another two people.  The beds were the upper and lower births with curtains in front for privacy.  There are lots of movie scenes set inside Pullman cars such as in Some Like it Hot.

Lord later told the story of Brother George at St. Mary’s College in Kansas who impressed all who met him.  A former student convinced the Union Pacific Railroad to name a Pullman railroad car on the route from Kansas City to San Francisco as Brother George.5

Isaac Ike Bosset, S.J.

Isaac Bosset, S.J.

In 1915 Isaac Bosset joined the Queen’s Work staff.  He had been moderator of the Collegian at St. Ignatius College during Lord’s high school years.  He did the proofreading of Lord’s writings.

We would wrangle for hours, pleasantly but furiously, over my deliberate use of words not in the dictionary, of sentence structure that seemed to me stronger than the laws permitted in a violation of syntax which to me served to underline the thought.  Out they all went.  And in his presence I was honestly humble.  He invariably prevailed.6


But I have often wondered if, in the long run, my freer approach to writing may not have had something in its favor.  By the time he had drilled me for years, his taste prevailed.  The law had triumphed and the dictionary was honored with no breaches.  I still wonder . . . 7

Bosset trained Frances Bittner to proofread.

With gratitude and affection I pay tribute to Father Bosset and Frances Bittner.  They knew their craft; they were the world's best copyreaders and revisers, the best possible proofreaders, completely sure of (or willing to look up) the facts involved; completely convinced that accuracy was better than freshness and the correct word and sentence more valuable than the sparkling and unusual one.8

Lord thought Bosset a universal genius, knowledgeable on a wide range subjects including the entire printing process. Printers at times admitted that Bossett knew more then they did.  But Bosset had Parkinson’s.  He kept working for many years despite the palsy of his hands.  He was also haunted by a bog of scruples.  ‘Scruples’ is an obsession over every mistake one has made with an overwhelming sense of guilt.  Due to his Parkinson’s Bosset would quit work in the 1930s.  He would die in December 1938.9

Lord later noted that Bosset had:

The most harrowing case of scruples I have ever seen.  Eventually they would kill him, though he seemed to die of Parkinson’s disease. . . .  On any question that involved others, his decisions were almost infallible.  On any that concerned himself, they were fantastically wrong.  He was a great theologian who never could see that the mercy of God and the truth of His revelation in the slightest way bore in upon himself.10

Support Publications and the Central Office

To help Sodalities across the country, the Central Office began producing support publications such as the Directors' Service.  For a dollar a year, parish directors received a monthly set of mimeographed pages that included:


1. Explanations of different phases of the Sodality.

2. Effective methods of organization.

3. Sermon or instruction outlines that directors may give to their Sodalists.

4. An open-discussion column wherein directors discuss questions of importance to directors.11


The success of this led to the Director’s Service for schools.  By 1935 almost 3,600 copies of the school version and 2,000 copies of the parish version were sent out each month.  The Semester Outline followed with suggestions for typical Sodality activities during the school year.  It would be sent annually to 700 parishes, 1,565 colleges and high schools, and 200 schools of nursing.  In 1935 it would be replaced by simply printing the material in The Queen’s Work magazine.12

The Central Office helped create Sodalities for nursing students.  Many Catholic hospitals had their own nursing schools.  A 4-8 page Sodalist Nurse mimeographed monthly was created and also a The Nurses’ Handbook of Sodality Organization.13

Other aides include Parish Sodality Helps and a Work Chart with monthly activities.14  The Central Office also sent out liturgical material for discussion and study; guides for mental prayer; Catholic-evidence-guild outlines; poster suggestions; material for the Catholic Literature Committee; and posters announcing events such Vocation Week, Summer Schools of Catholic Action, and Sodality conventions.15

Always looking for new marketing angles, Lord started his Pamphlet-a-Month Guild following the example of popular Book-of-the-Month Clubs.16

The Central Office set up college and high-school national advisory boards which sent in hundreds of reports each year on the Sodalities.17  The boards were important in telling the Central Office what was going on the field.  Keep in mind that the Central Office suggested activities for local Sodalities but did not control them or tell them what they had to do.

Under Daniel Lord the Sodality program very much followed the principal of subsidiarity which holds that decisions should be made at the lowest level possible.  Pius XI stated this principle in his 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo anno.  However, over the years the principle has gotten on and off attention—mostly off—and as many would point out, in many cases does not seem to apply to how the Catholic Church operates.

During these years Lord futilely pleaded with his provincial for more Jesuits to help with the work.

Booklets

In addition to pamphlets, Lord started writing and publishing booklets.  He would write fifteen.  Booklets had more pages, were somewhat larger, were bound (pamphlets were stapled), and lacked the catchy graphics of his pamphlets.

Lord published his booklet Brief Case for the Existence of God in 1931.  Lord tried to present philosophy in an outline form for discussion.  Here are the twelve topics:

 

I. General Notions

II. Atheism

III. A Planned Universe and Its Architect

IV. Cause and Effect

V. From Motion to Mover

VI. Dependent and Independent

VII. The Universal Consent of Mankind

VIII. Laws of Conscience and the Lawgiver

IX. The Model of Beauty

X. Personal God

XI. Reasons Against the Existence of God

XII. Christ’s Teaching Concerning God


The topics show Lord’s use of the proofs of Thomas Aquinas especially the Argument from Design.


Early on, Lord figured out that the best way to produce and publish was to do it themselves.  However they faced limitations:

So, producing our own books [and pamphlets], we lacked the know-how and persistence, that preoccupation with circulation and that access to the markets which the professional publisher has.  We were strictly a mail-order publication house.  We had no salesmen on the road.  We found that by mail the Catholic bookseller probably would consider three to five books a large order.  Most booksellers used their book department as a mere service connected with the real business of profitable church goods.  Some of the slightly high-brow sellers cared for nothing but foreign translations.  Some felt that booklets and pamphlets just cluttered up their store.18

Pamphlets of 1931

In 1931 Lord wrote and published six pamphlets: Murder in the Classroom, My Faith and I, The Students’ Spiritual Leadership Movement, When Sorrow Comes, and Why Leave Home?.  He also published The Light of the World of the world as the first of twenty-four annual Christmas pamphlets.

Murder in the Classroom: The Summer Colonists Discuss Catholic Education is the next Dick and Sue pamphlet.  Several parents discuss with Father Hall the value of Catholic education while Dick and Sue are boat racing on the lake.  (We learn the Mr. Bradley lost some money in the stock market crash.)

Father Hall talks about the problem of non-religious colleges that undermine religious faith.  He speaks of Dynamiting Religion where biology undermines belief in a soul and a creator; where history undermines belief in Jesus and the Catholic Church; and where psychology denies free will, sexual morality, and marriage.  Lord also laments private colleges that have quotas on the number of Catholics and Jews that can be accepted.

Lord argues that Catholic colleges are not inferior.

We must not forget that Catholicity is not merely an external form; it is a system of life and living.  It is a historic tradition 2000 years old.  It is faith permeating knowledge and supported by the cold, clear reasonings of philosophy and science.  It is art and music and beauty and literature and drama all in one magnificent unity.  It is big enough to take in the latest findings of science and yet to remember the undying words of Christ; to be interested in the last discoveries in Egypt without forgetting the God who is ages older than the pyramids; to be ever as modern as the day and as enduringly ancient as the rock of Peter.

Now don’t misunderstand me.  The student who goes to a Catholic college gets all that a secular college has to give of literature, science, mathematics, history, language.  His courses are rounded and thorough and adequate.  His teachers are trained and devoted.  But through his entire schooling their runs like a golden chord the splendid tradition of catholicity.19

In My Faith and I

Daniel Lord Pamphlet: My Faith and I

In My Faith and I is a great example of Lord as the ‘The Great American Catholic Apologist.20  Lord reflects on this own life and then lays out an elegant defense of the Catholic Church and its history.  Admittedly, Lord has a romanticized view of several points of Catholic history, particularly the Crusades, however that does not distract from this readable explanation of Catholicism.

The Student’s Spiritual Leadership Movement is a short pamphlet covering the scope of the Sodality movement in 1931.21

In When Sorrow Comes Lord describes three tragedies: a successful businessman who lost all due to a crooked partner, a woman whose young adult son died who had wanted to be a priest, and young chemist who is blinded.  Lord asks: If God so loves the world, why does He permit all this?  If He is the loving Father, tender-hearted toward His children, how does he explain to them the suffering of humanity?22

Lord then cites the examples of the suffering of Jesus, Mary, and the followers of Jesus.  Suffering then is something that Christ gives His friends most freely. . . Suffering, we could well argue, is often the highest compliment Christ pays to His friends.23

In the section Genius Through Suffering Lord talks about people transformed by their suffering.  The shallow master of epigrams, Oscar Wilde, became after the horrible sorrow of trial and imprisonment author of the majestic ‘De Profundis’ and the immortal ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol.’24 Lord mentions O. Henry and Abraham Lincoln.

In Training to Pity Lord describes how suffering helps people understand other’s suffering.  He also suggests people offer their suffering up for others.  Lord summarizes his views:

Sorrow and suffering come into the life of all of us.  We have however a clear choice.  When the shadow of the cross falls up us, we may lift our heads to question God’s justice.  We may hate the suffering and refuse to accept the companionship of the suffering Christ.  Or we may take suffering gratefully to our hearts as a pure proof of the love with which Christ honored Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, Peter crucified head downward . . .25

Just like the book of Job, the answers Lord provides may not be satisfying to some people trying to square their suffering with the idea of a loving God.  This pamphlet would sell over 109,000 copies by 1963.

In Why Leave Home? When it’s Such Fun to Be There Dick and Sue Bradley visit Father Hall because a storm has stopped their tennis game.  Father Hall is a novelist who writes about young people.  Each winter during the tourist off-season he writes a new one.

Hall talks about young people who live at home but are not there very often and are disconnected from their families.  Father Hall argues for companionship, sympathetic understanding of your parents’ wishes.26  He talks about being helpful around the home and how to treat brothers and sisters.  Later Dick and Sue send Father Hall an Examination of Attitude Toward Home with six points for readers to consider.  This 1931 pamphlet covers an issue very relevant to many modern families.

Pageant d’Hotel

Lord wrote Pageant d’Hotel: Depicting Hospitality Through the Ages,27 which was Sponsored by the Hotel Greeters of America and performed at the Hotel Jefferson in St. Louis.

Synopsis

In the opening pantomime: HOSPITALITY is beset by her oppressors weaving their arms around her.  With thunder and lightning CHAOS appears.  But TOLERANCE enters and defeats CHAOS.  TIME and MEMORY introduce the scenes that follow such as Abraham as a model of hospitality; The Sheik’s Tent about Bedouin hospitality; Bethlehem where Aram offers his stable to Mary and Joseph; Columbus stopping at a monastery; Chaucer’s Pilgrims on their way to Canterbury at the Tabard Inn; Sir Francis Bacon with Ben Johnson at the Mermaid Tavern; Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and others conversing; Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John Calhoun working out the Missouri Compromise at the Made Hotel in Washington D.C.; guests of the Jefferson Hotel going to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair singing Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis; the Greeter’s Home in Denver Colorado; and a finale Coronation of the Queen of Love and Beauty.

A Story Told By Daniel Lord

Forgive the Laughter

Solemn delegates to the secular educational convention sat in rapt attention.  Among them was a delightful young woman from a Catholic college.  She had brought along her sense of humor—maybe because she was new to educational conventions.  A typical speaker held the platform, weaving words.  He spoke pessimistically of the failure of our civilization.  He talked of the evil that isms had done to the world.

The only force that remains, he cried, is a spiritual force.  That spiritual force alone is enduring, permanent, united.  Now I represent forty Protestant denominations. . . .

At that point my young college friend with the unfortunate sense of humor burst into a gale of laughter.28

The Central Office Stays Active

Keeping straight all the Sodality conventions is difficult.  Student conventions were different from the Summer Schools of Catholic Action.  The 1932 SSCA took place in Saint Louis in August with 116 lay men and women, 148 sisters, and 32 priests.


Volume XXV of The Queen’s Work ran from October 1932 through May 1933.  The back page of each issue ran a fictitious front page newspaper of important events in Christian history.


THE RHEIMS CHIMES

PAGAN KING CLOVIS BAPTIZED AS CATHOLIC AT RHEIMS

(First Catholic French King)


THE TOURS TIMES

MOSLEMS OVERWHELMED BY FRENCH FORCES

(Battle of Tours 732)

Pamphlets of 1932

Lord published nine pamphlets in 1932: The Best Best Seller, Christ the Modern, Gateway of Grace, God and the Depression, Has Life Any Meaning?, Hours Off, The Ruling Passion, Whose Country Is This?, and Fountain of Christmas Gifts for his annual Christmas pamphlet.

Lord’s pamphlet, Gateway of Grace: Your Parish Church covers what the title would lead one to expect: each parish church is a monument to the parish priest who conceived it and saw it rise to completion.

Considered just as a business enterprise, the work of building carried through by American priests is something that will for generations continue to excite honest admiration.  Beyond that each church is a tribute to the resourcefulness of pastors, to their love of art, their zeal for souls, their determination that the house of God shall be in some degree worthy of the King of Kings and His royal people.29

In God and the Depression Lord notes, We have a queer way of blaming God for everything that goes wrong.30  Lord describes the transformation that had occurred: the false prosperity of the Roaring Twenties followed by the disaster of the economic collapse.  But where is God?  Is God really the Provident Father he claims to be, they ask if He permits this worldwide depression?31  Lord argues that the Depression was caused by humans who rejected God. The subtitles of the next sections explain how God became An Exiled Deity, who was Asked to Retire from the world while people chose to Eat, Drink and Forget after World War I.

Let’s be fair even with God.  In so far as the depression is an evil and a terrible thing, it is man-made in each last detail.  Proud, cocky, strutting, self-sufficient man had his chance.  God accepted his challenge, and man ran, within a startlingly short time, first into the history’s most savage war and then into a world catastrophe.32

Lord traces the world’s rejection of God back to the war:

The greed of individuals and the monumental jealousy of nations, the lust of power and the longing for domination, plunged the world into suicidal conflict, and we talked despairingly of the failure of Christianity—when Christianity was opposed heart and soul to everything that had brought about the war.  Men came to doubt God because of a war that had been caused by neglect of Him, of his laws, and of the principles on which his church was founded.33

Lord’s pamphlet follows the arguments of the biblical prophet Amos.  Moral and religious decline leads to catastrophe.  The solution is God and his ways.  Lord describes people returning to religion under the subtitles: Christ Was Right, Religion Reborn, Back to Faith, Filled Churches, and Bursts of Charity.  This is a very important pamphlet for it shows Lord’s religious take on history and his skill as a writer.

Lord ends the pamphlet:

Perhaps all this is just the drama by which mankind lives once more the story of the Prodigal Son.  For years, surely, mankind lived in a far country, wasting its substance living riotously.  The depression is its day among swine, its long dusty road back home.  But on the high hill, watching, waiting, far more eager to welcome straying mankind than mankind is to return, is the Heavenly Father.  Depression ends when mankind, weary with unbelief and lust, throwing over the leaders who betrayed it and the creeds and doubts that fed it husks for food, flings itself into the forgiving arms of the Father who made it, preserves it, chastises it, and forgives it in the end.34

Has Life Any Meaning?

In Has Life Any Meaning? Lord states:

Logically there are only two possible intellectual stands that a man can take today with regard to the meaning of life: he can be a frank pagan, leaning on the broken read of his unaided reason; or he can be a Catholic, admitting that, splendid as they are, the feats of human intelligence need for some things the light of supernatural revelation called faith.35

Lord used the word ‘pagan’ broadly to include all kinds of non-belief, including atheism.  He saw a fundamental dichotomy between what he called ‘paganism’ which denied God and the religious faith that believed humans had eternal destinies.  He saw the Catholic Church as the only true religion with it teachings based on reason.

Under the subtitle Anesthetics Lord talks about nonbelievers.

No wonder that men who walk this level go mad about sex or work.  At least in sex or work one frankly admits one has a heart of animal lust and an animal back for the bearing of burdens.  In the heat of passion and in the throes of labor one forgets the bitter helplessness of this whole rotten mess called life.36

Lord’s pagan/Catholic dichotomy will be the basis for his ‘big picture’ pamphlets looking at the world around him.  Has Life Any Meaning? however, is hard to read because Lord ‘lays it on too thick’ in arguing against unbelief.  Although no sales figures exist, this pamphlet would be one of his most popular.

Hours Off: What We Do When We Do Nothing starts with a story of a women’s party that comes to a halt because the radio does not work.  Lord admits that millions of people are simply lost when thrown suddenly on their own resources.37 (Note today how many children’s parties involve watching movies that they all have already seen.)

Once we sang; now we go out to have people sing for us.  We once danced; now we pay other people to dance for our entertainment.  We once made music; now the musical instruments rust and decay while professionals strum the modern equivalent of the lute.  We once played ball; we now drive to the ballpark or stadium and sit while professionals or high-priced amateurs take our exercise.  And we use our automobile, not to go places, but to go places fast.38

Lord suggests using leisure for reading, hobbies, letter writing, and religion.  Of course he laments the use leisure for immoral purposes.  For Lord, a key component determining the quality of life is how one spends his or her leisure.

The Ruling Passion describes the driving force that guides our lives.  Lord starts with a scene of a wealthy society doctor returning from Paris to New York with his third wife.  Newsmen photograph the couple as they come down the ship’s gangplank.  Years before the man had been a good Catholic boy heading toward the priesthood until he learned to make money.

Lord compares the doctor to the rich young man in the gospels who turns away from Jesus.  Lord, wondering what happened to that rich young man, creates an imaginary story in which the rich young man left Jesus and become wealthier.  He befriended Levi the Pharisee and then went to Rome and saw its wealth and splendor.  He returned to Jerusalem, saw Jesus crucified, and felt relief that he had not followed Jesus.  He returned to Rome where in box seats he saw Peter and Paul executed.

The Ruling Passion would go through 17 printings by 1952.  It was published in Ireland in 1944 as The Story of The Rich Young Man.

Whose Country is This?

Daniel Lord Pamphlet: Whose Country Is It?

In the 1920s and 1930s anti-Catholicism, racism, and bigotry grew in intensity.  The growing Catholic population attracted the attention of hate groups, especially the reinvigorated KKK.  (The migration of African Americans out of the South also stirred up hate groups.)  Lord wanted to write against anti-Catholic rhetoric and misinformation, so he wrote a story: Whose Country is This?  This pamphlet would sell over 59,000 copies by 1963.

Set in Oklahoma, four men are playing golf.  Three men know each other: two Catholics—Kelley and Floyd, one Mason.  The fourth, Overman, the newcomer wears a Shriner’s pin.  Overman comments on being surprised that someone he met turned out to be Catholic.  A Catholic!  My stars!  I thought all Catholics were micks or dagos.  . . .  I lived in Oklahoma long enough to know that good Catholics can’t be good Americans and though I’m a Democrat I’ve worked as hard as I could to keep Al Smith and the Pope out of the White House.39  (In Oklahoma the bigotry was particularly strong: crosses were burnt along the tracks when Smith’s train passed.)

The golf foursome finish the game—Overman won—and sit down for dinner.  Floyd asks Overman to explain his views against Catholics and then lays out the facts.  Floyd talks about the Catholic founders of the New World.  He talks about significant Catholics in the revolution and about the lack of religious freedom in the early colonies.  Floyd answers all the charges that Catholics are un-American.

No one can answer lies so fast as they can be uttered.  We have been overwhelmed with lies.  Our answer to those lies is the blood of our men and the purity of our women.  We love America even when our fellow Americans distrust us.  We are patriots even when our patriotism is questioned.  We have never failed our country.  Please God, we never shall.40

A few days later Floyd received a package that contained an American flag with a note from Overman.  Put the flag up somewhere on your wall.  Somehow, Mason though I am, you convinced me that it is very safe in Catholic hands.41

The Best Best Seller

Daniel Lord Pamphlet: Best Best Seller

In The Best Best Seller Father Hall has invited his new friends Ford Osborne and Helen Webb—self-identified as two thoroughgoing pagans—to his home in Lakeside.  The two young writers had recently been published in the Manhattanite.  Fr. Hall comments: I liked your verse Miss Webb.  But there was a touch of Dorothy Parker about it, and too much Dorothy Parker is very much like too much poison ivy.  It's certainly startling, but does leave an itch.42

As Hilda the housekeeper serves coffee, Helen surveys Hall’s office that includes a complete set of Conrad, a volume of Ogden Nash, a very small golfing cup, , , , and a collection of pipes [Meerschaums] hanging against the pelt of a mountain lion.43  Father Hall describes his own writing as novels that are read by a faithful few, essays, and an occasional pamphlet.

Father Hall describes the bestseller he has been reading..  This is the best best seller ever written, . . . written by the man I honestly believe to be the world’s greatest writer. . . . The book is the Gospels, and the author is Jesus Christ.  And we, you and I, are not going to talk religion at all but the subject you know a lot about, literature.44

Lord, typical for a priest of the time, took much of the Bible literally.  Although he did not take the six-day creation story literally, he probably believed that Adam and Eve were the first humans.  Unfamiliar with the developing historical-critical method for Bible studies, Lord read the Gospels as the exact words of Jesus recorded by the gospel writers.  So he attributed the literary quality of the sayings of Jesus to Jesus.  Lord had originally titled this pamphlet Christ the Litterateur.

Father Hall states:

I’ve read the Gospels through, and heaven knows how many times, not looking for bromidioms, platitudes, or commonplaces, but conscious that I would feel one should it crop out.  But it never does.  Instead each phrase is as clear-cut, vivid, unusual, out of the ordinary as if His mind was always sparking at the highest possible tension.45

We have seen Christ as a signpost for virtues and moral precepts instead of as a man who never did a stupid or a dull thing and never uttered a thought that was not saturated with and phrased in perfect rhythm, and exact words, and with a power of condensation and vividness of imagery that put His style beyond all possibility of imitation.46

Lord saw the few words spoken by Mary as not the words of Luke but rather Mary’s own words.  So Father Hall notes, We have very few of her utterances, but she spoke naturally in lovely figures of speech, in beautiful rhythm, or in poetry.47  Referring to the Magnificat, Hall states: It's free verse before Walt Whitman was thought of or Amy Lowell smoked her first cigar.48

Regarding the scene of the woman caught in adultery, Hall remembered a story about the theater reviewer Woollcott: It was a particularly wretched theatrical season, and he wrote in his column: ‘Let him that is without sin among you stone the first cast.’49

Hall comments that:

The interesting part about the expressions of Christ is that like all great literature they are relatively easy to parody and practically impossible to imitate. . . . I remember the youngster who used to talk about the Hello prayer.  I didn’t know what in the world he meant until he said it to me. Our father, who art in heaven, hello, what’s your name?50

Hall mentions that Christ founded his church on upon a pun: Thou are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church, since the word ‘Peter’ means ‘rock.’  Hall calls the Prodigal Son story the World’s greatest short story.  Hall also comments that Jesus would have made a great trial lawyer: Jesus outwits those who tried to trap him, such as with the question of paying the Roman tax.  Hall describes Christ as a dramatist of action in healing the deaf and dumb man by putting fingers in the man’s ears and touching the man’s tongue.  As for the story of Jesus driving out the demons, he: dispatches them into the swine who were wallowing nearby, and a magnificent dramatic conclusion, which with all due respect would delight the heart of a motion-picture producer, sends the herd of the swine galloping over the cliff and into the sea.51

Hall laments that modern writers have put style over the truth in writing: They would slay the truth for an epigram and kill a fact to make a phrase.52

And into this lovely form, what are the authors of the present day packing?  Clever lies, smart dirt, sophistical defense of the very things that would overthrow society, brilliant characterizations of people right from the gutter and the lowest nightclubs, morality that reeks of the pigpen and the barnyard, philosophy that would cause an ancient Sophist to hide his head, and such a vague uncertainty about everything that we no longer have an honest yes and a candid no.53

Ford Osborne and Helen Webb drive away wondering how Jesus, from a workers’ background with no training or education, could create such literature.

A Candle to Christ: A Christmas Playlet

The characters are Geoffrey Clarke, Herbert Goodall, and Philip McAlister.

 

Synopsis

It is Christmas Eve in Geoffrey Clarke’s study.  Three candles stand on the shelf underneath a print of Correggio’s painting, Holy Night.  Clarke instructs the butler to let in the two guests and then lock the study from outside.

Clarke’s friend Herbert Goodall arrives.  We learn that the two have met together on Christmas Eve for thirty years to light a candle to Christ.  The first year Philip McAlister was part of the group and he announced that he had developed a chemical formula.  Then McAlister left on a trip abroad and disappeared.  When he heard McAlister had died, Goodall took his formula and made a fortune.

Goodall admits that years later the still alive McAlister had come to him and expressed his anger that Goodall had smashed his ideals.

GOODALL: He forbade me to tell you.  He told me that he had heard of my theft, that he didn’t care a snap of his finger for the formula, but he was done with ideals and friendship—I had smashed his life.54

Earlier that day CLARKE has found McAlister and invited him to come.  McAlister arrives.  He is surprised to see Goodall.  He tries to leave but cannot because the doors are locked.  Goodall feels regret and offers to pay him lots of money for the formula.  But McAlister is unwilling to forgive Goodall because he had destroyed his ideals.

CLARKE: You talk of ideals, you egotists!  You don’t know what they mean.  There are ideals.  (Pointing suddenly to the Correggio): There was ONE who asked for friendship and heard nothing but the contemptuous laughter of Bethlehem, who begged for hospitality and was given a stable, who pleaded for the love of hearts and was given the breath of brute beasts.  And because He was an idealist, He forgave them all and loved them all and lay on the straw for them all.55

In the end the two are reconciled as all three light the candles before the Nativity painting as they had done thirty years before.

Camp Controversy: A Communion Playlet

Synopsis

This tiny play is set in the Counsellor’s Quarters at a summer camp were four girls are chatting: Jane, from a Catholic college; Helen, a Catholic from the state university; Martha, a sincere Protestant from an upstate school; and Phyllis, a good-natured pagan from the state university.56

The girls discuss the Catholic belief of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  In the end, Jane and Helen decide to get up early Friday morning to go to mass in town.

Although the play seems a bit contrived, many students of the time probably found this presentation of Catholic belief far more interesting than religion class.

  

  

Isaac Bosset, S.J.

No, Catholics Can’t Be Patriots



NOTES



Chapter 14    Chapter 16

  

Copyright 2021 Stephen Werner