EXTRA   MATERIAL

Chapter Eighteen - 1935
Joe College and Chick Pagan Return

Daughters of Victory

In 1935 Lord wrote and produced Daughters of Victory for the Ursuline Sisters at Ursuline Academy which was originally in the Soulard neighborhood of St. Louis, but had moved to a new campus in the suburbs and opened in 1926.¹  The show had eight scenes on the history of the Ursulines.

1. Founding of the Ursuline Order in 1535

Angela Merici has a vision of St. Ursula

2. Growth of the Ursuline Order

Ursulines in a Primitive School

3. Ursulines in the French Court (with a dance scene)

4. Ursuline martyrs in the French Revolution

5. To the Ends of the Earth

Representatives from all countries with Ursulines

6. Ursulines in North America—Quebec 1639

7. Ursulines in New Orleans during the War of 1812

8. Ursulines in First School in St. Louis, Missouri

Miscellaneous

Lord received an Honorary Doctorate from Creighton University in 1935.

In 1934 and 1935 the Central Office experimented with pairs of two one-hour talks on these topics:

1. Christ and Catholic Action

The Sodality and Catholic Action

2. The Church, the Sodality, Efficient Organizations

Your Personality and Leadership

3. Christ and Our Lady in Today’s Organization

My Personality and Leadership

4. Apostolic and Intellectual Projects Today

Our Personality and Leadership

5. Social Life and Pertinent Problems Today

General Concluding Forum, Questions—Answers²

The Central Office and the SSCA in 1935

The first Sodality had been created by the Jesuit Jean Leunis in 1563 in Rome.  It became known as the Prima Primaria Sodality of Our Lady.  Sodalities that wanted could apply for affiliation.  By 1935 2,318 Sodalities in America were affiliated with it.³  The Central Office did the paper work.

The Central Office had a staff of six Jesuits and 28 lay secretaries, clerks, and sales directors.  In the middle of the Depression Lord’s staff expanded its efforts on social action.  The Jesuit Provincials had set up a committee on the Social Order so articles on social problems and against communism appeared in The Queen’s Work.  Lord’s Storm Tossed ran as a serialized novel.  The magazine began a campaign against Mexican persecution of the Catholic Church.

In the next years The Queen’s Work would publish numerous pieces on the revolution in Mexico which was frequently anti-clerical.  The Central Office supported the 1935 Borah Resolution in the U.S. Senate which aimed to curb the atheistic persecution in Mexico and investigate violations of American lives and property in Mexico.  The Queen’s Work covered the story of Father McDonald who went to Mexico in 1935 disguised as a layman to investigate the situation.⁴  Here are some of the graphics in The Queen’s Work on the Mexican situation:

    

For the Summer School of Catholic Action a one week session was held in Boston from August 5-10 (598 attendees: 381 students, 160 sisters, 57 priests) and a two week session in St. Louis from Aug 19-31  (361 attendees: 139 lay men and women, 185 sisters, 38 priests.)  At St. Louis three hours of college credit was available in sociology or religion for the conference.  Tuition was $18.75, and room and board was $30.  There were special seminary rates and a special poster to market to seminarians.

An advertising poster for the 1935 conference had photos of He and She sitting at a piano with a statue of Mary on the top and a copy of the sheet music for the then popular love song Moonglow.

Picture 1.

He: Going to Europe this summer?

She: Thanks for the compliment.

  

Picture 2

He: Mountains or seashore?

She: Not on my allowance.

  

Picture 3

He: Staying home on vacation?

She: Hope not.

  

Picture 4

He: Summer school of Catholic action?

She: You and me—both!

  

By 1935 the Central Office was coordinating over 2000 Parish sodalities.  Then they set up a parish advisory board.  In June the Central Office, in trying to encourage rural sodalities, brought in priests from rural Missouri and Illinois for workshops led by John LaFarge.

Pamphlets of 1935

The Church Is Out of Date

Everybody’s Talking About Heaven

How To Pick a Successful Career

Of Dirty Stories

Pardon My Manners

The Successful Failure

What of Free Will?

What of Lawful Birth Control?

My Christmas Gift to You.

In The Church is Out of Date Lord is doing apologetics and defending the church in a forceful way.  He wrote the pamphlet to defend the church from false criticisms.

It finds attributed to itself the most absurd teachings, many of which it immediately condemned when they were first taught by its enemies: that all who are not Catholics for example are damned to hell; that unbaptized infants suffer eternally; that the marriages of non-Catholics are not true marriages at all; that the Pope can’t possibly sin; that it’s quite right, if not actually excellent and commendable, to choke pagan and heretical babies in their cradles; that the world was created in six working days that started at midnight on Monday and ended with the midnight that divided Saturday and Sunday.⁵

One reads the same old stock of misstatements and misinterpretations of Catholic teaching, the same jibes: The adoration of Mary, The end justifies the means, Catholic opposition to free institutions, The conflict of Church and state, The war between religion and science, Superstitious credulities, The church’s concentration on the next world to the neglect of this world.⁶

Lord notes that Catholics who give up their faith seem to lose their grasp on what the church actually believes and does.  He also answers the criticism that the church is narrow-minded by noting that in Catholic education a wide diversity of opinions and philosophies are considered.

Lord notes that Catholics are self-critical:

Laymen who really love the church will, just because of their love for it, be outspoken and almost savage in their criticism of human defects that hold back the Church’s progress.

....

The atmosphere that surrounds gatherings of priests and bishops is, not lush with complacent self-congratulation, but crisp and biting with self-criticism and discontent with things that are wrong, slack, inadequate or out of line.⁷

Like any good salesman, Lord compares his product to the competition:

And while Protestantism of the present is probably the most astounding medley of badly digested, inaccurately explained, constantly fluid, lightly held, and widely contested teachings, it retains one firm doctrine, which is not a doctrine but a cry of alarm.  It maintains that the Catholic Church is wrong and that Protestantism must protest in organized fashion against it.⁸

The glaring fact of India, a land ruled by Hindu thought and religion, is enough to discourage any man who does not mistake poetry for reality and the dreams of misty thinkers for life lived in accord with these dreams.  India itself, India with its superstitions and tyrannies, its millions of outcast untouchables contrasting with its few extravagant, incredible despots, its mad swirling of creeds and cults and idol-crowded temples, its animals worshiped with divine honors, and child marriage and female slavery, is all the answer one needs for the yogis and mystics who have offered Hinduism to our modern world.⁹

Lord concludes by arguing that the Catholic Church is not for weaklings.  Historian Arnold Sparr would note, citing this pamphlet as an example, Nearly all of Lord’s pamphlets carried the impression that the church possessed a solution to every current problem.¹⁰

Everybody’s Talking About Heaven

In Everybody’s Talking About Heaven six friends: Gert, Bill, Fran, Fred, Neil, and Paul go to eat after a show.  The pamphlet is told from the perspective of Neil who had been in training to be a priest but had to leave the seminary after he almost went blind.

The group gets to talking about heaven.  They admit they have plenty of images of hell, but few of heaven in part because priests often talk about the former but not the latter.  The group discusses views of the afterlife in different religious groups.  They also talk about the Broadway revival of Green Pastures with its African American cast.  Someone refers to the recently deceased lead: Richard B. Harrison, the great and original Lawd, had gone, let’s hope, to walk all over God’s heaven, the fantasy had not lost its power.¹¹  (In 1936 the movie Green Pastures would appear starring Rex Ingram.)

Neil gives his explanation of the Beatific Vision:

Limitless

All right; the man dies.  He has proved by his life his worthiness of heaven.  His soul, that part of his being by which he knows . . . is transferred to the presence of God.  He is given the Beatific Vision.  He suddenly sees the limitless God.  That’s the Vision.  It makes him beatifically happy.  That’s the Beatific. Why?

Because suddenly he stands in the presence of that limitless reality, of which all the little realities that so interested him on earth are just faint imitations.  All truth is here.  All reality is here.  The careening planets and the complicated atoms, the mountain ranges and the depths of the sea, the uncounted species that live on the earth—all these are the statues of which God is not merely the Michelangelo but the model and source and creator.  The soul still has its thirst for truth.  And lo and behold, all truth is right there in front of it.  The soul may go on learning and learning and investigating and investigating and exploring and exploring (we have to use our limited terms); but because truth is limitless, all eternity will not exhaust it.  Eternity is too short to see and understand and be sated with the infinite reality that is God.

Whew! was Bill’s only comment.

The Crest

But we are not through.  We see, and see clearly, that a man can never love or be loved enough.  The capacity for love grows with its use.  The appreciation of beauty, which is really a part of the faculty of love, expands as it feeds on what is beautiful.  The man dies.  The soul, which is the center of his power to love, to appreciate, to exult, stands safe in heaven.  Before it is limitless beauty.  All the beauty of precious stones and carved ivory, of sunsets behind mountain ranges, and sunlight after storms at sea, the thrill of glorious music, the calm satisfaction of graceful architecture, flowers at their crest, waterfalls at their laciest, the curving smile of a child, the strong face of a man, the warmth of charity, the reassurance of friendship, the happiness of youth—all these He made possible.

He is the beautiful God.  Beauty exists because He is its boundless source.  Artists create beauty because He, the great artist, not only gave the urge to follow His creative example but filled the world with models on which to form the lines and from which to copy the colors.  And the soul, thirsty for beauty and hungry for love, realizes that the God of limitless beauty has loved it with an everlasting love, will love it with an everlasting love, and, what is even more astounding, is pleased to be loved by the soul that stands before Him—loved with a love that will never know love’s sad satiety.

Endlessly

And the soul, thirsty for beauty and hungry for love, knows that though it explore endlessly His storehouse it will never remotely exhaust its treasures.  And though the soul will live forever, it will never plumb the depths of that divine love or sink into the weariness of other loves but will feel love responding to a limitless love and a beauty beyond exhaustion.

And that too, Bill, is heaven.

Bill took a deep draft of his black coffee, which was by this time almost cold.¹²

Where can one find a better description of belief in the afterlife?

How to Pick a Successful Career

Lord wrote How to Pick a Successful Career in 1935 during the Depression.

I still say with emphasis and vigor:

Success is planned.

Careers are prepared for, and with even more care than is needed in preparing for a transatlantic flight.

Happiness is laboriously carved out of thoughtfully considered materials.¹³

Today career choice is an important issue for most young people.  Most high schools have counselors to guide students in career and college choices.  However in 1935, career choice was a very new concept developing within the middle class.  Prior to this time most people did not have many options.  In fact the word ‘career’ was not used for most people, who just wanted ‘jobs’.  Many working class people had few job options.  For many, working at the town factory or following in a family member’s footsteps were the only options.

Some wealthy had options because of their money, however often social and family constraints limited their options.  Someone might be pressured into entering the family business or into some careers.  Did Edsel Ford have options other than being the head of Ford Motor Company under his father?

Lord wrote and spoke to young people in the growing Catholic middle-class.  Most were going to high school; many were also going to college.  This group had many more choices than previous generations.  The increase in career options would continue in the wake of World War II and the G.I. Bill.  Of course it would take until the 1960s until many career choices were opened up for women.

In this pamphlet Lord once again gives straightforward practical advice including the need for career planning and constant development of one’s career.  For entirely too many people stumble into life.¹⁴

Lord recommends looking at one’s abilities, skills, talents, interests, health, physical qualifications, and level of Pep.  He gives lots of thoughts on specific careers and recommends avoiding overcrowded professions such as stage and screen.  He notes the need for nurses, teachers, and good salesman and saleswomen.  He notes shortages of teachers of dramatic arts, trained librarians, hotel personnel, and writers of children’s literature.

Lastly Lord describes Genius Slaves:

Notwithstanding Gray’s elegy, most genius does not fail from lack of opportunity but from the sheer laziness or from a persuasion that genius in itself, without work, will succeed.  As a matter of fact the outstanding geniuses of all time have been examples of the famous definition genius is one part inspiration and nine parts perspiration.

Wagner worked like a dray horse.  The technical perfection of great poets from Chaucer to Frost, was obtained by the slavish polishing of single lines.  Einstein scarcely interrupts his studying to eat.  Most flippant young people would regard Edison as a drudge.  The great musicians reached their heights by toiling like galley slaves to attain the perfect mastery of their instrument or voice.  Great businessmen, the Ford’s, Morgan’s, Sloan’s, Schwab’s, James J. Hill’s, whatever other virtues they may possess or lack, have an almost superhuman ability to work.¹⁵

Lord later told this story about this pamphlet:

Confession or Conceit?

The high-school student that I had just met was pleasant and smiling.  She was even ingratiating.  Then suddenly she said:

I’ve read a lot of your pamphlets, but for some reason I did not like ‘How to Pick a Successful Career.’

Oh, didn’t you?  Why?  She looked a trifle embarrassed.  Did you read it?  I asked.

No, she confessed, a little sheepishly, I read only the first sentence.

I didn’t let her know that I remembered, but the first sentence of that particular booklet begins somewhat in this way: If you are a genius, don’t trouble to read any further.¹⁶

Of Dirty Stories

In Of Dirty Stories Lord describes dirty stories as fundamentally pagan in character and origin.

From the cheapest of burlesque houses, that had borrowed their plots from smokingroom stories which had been in turn derived from the dive and the brothel, the Broadway producers stole the ancient jokes and stale stories as the basic plots of their revue sketches.  And the authors filled their plays with double-meaning line and smutty situations begotten in the maggoty minds of degenerates.¹⁷

Lord distinguishes between the vulgar story and obscene story:

The vulgar story deals, so to speak, with the plumbing.  . . .

The obscene story on the other hand deals directly with wrongdoing of a special type, sins against the proper sex relation, with notable emphasis on adultery, seduction, and, regrettable in our era, our perversions and abnormalities.  They are recitals of the vices and passions and base desirings of men and women, treated as if these sad crimes were funny and subjects for laughter.¹⁸

Lord admits that some obscene stories are funny for they are founded on incongruity, the foundation of all humor.

Lord makes the point that these stories are funny to those who are not the people in the stories.  To the victims of adultery and seduction these stories are tragic.  Lord also notes Cleverness is just about the last thing needed for the invention of an immoral dirty story.¹⁹

Lord finally concludes: As for a Catholic the tongue is the red satin cushion upon which rests the Son of God hidden lightly in the bread of the Eucharist.²⁰

Of Dirty Stories would sell over 244,000 copies and go through 33 printing by 1963.  It would be Lord’s sixth best selling pamphlet.

Pardon My Manners would sell over 90,000 copies with 24 printings by 1963.  In Pardon My Manners jury members, the readers, are invited to pass judgment on the manners of four people: Mr. Usa Straightarm, Isabelle Heedless, Ivan Heavytread, and Mrs. I Gofer Show who has a daughter Watta.  Lord describes their behaviors and then goes on to argue for the value of good manners.  He even sees having good manners as a Christian virtue:

But Christian politeness if founded on something very different from the desire to conciliate or win favors.

Basically it applies to life and living the principle which Christ has laid down of doing unto others what we would have them do unto us.²¹

Lord refers to Christ the Gentleman.  Lord includes a list of questions and topics regarding manners so the reader can judge his or her own manners before passing judgment on the hapless four.

The Successful Failure is a great story of the elderly widower Joe Huntley who is now living with his married daughter Barbara.  She leaves him to hire a carpenter to build storm windows for the apartment where they live.  She says she will send a carpenter over to the apartment.  Alone Joe Huntley looks back on his life and all he failed to accomplished.  The newspapers tell of the death Roscoe Hayes, a high school classmate who had gone on to achieve wealth and power while Joe struggled.  Joe did have his devoted wife Mary and he raised four daughters, now married, and a son who became a lawyer.

Old Joe Huntley falls asleep in his chair.  He awakens to find an elderly carpenter in the room with.  [Spoiler Alert—Stop here if you intend to read the pamphlet.]  The elderly carpenter and Joe talk about lives and their struggles.  The carpenter is of course Joseph who says Well done, good and faithful servant.  Come, walk forever in the companionship of Mary and keep eternal friendship with Joseph, successful failure and foster father of the Son of God.²²

In What of Lawful Birth Control? Dick and Sue visit Father Hall to pick up the conversation they had started four years earlier on birth control covered in the 1930 pamphlet Speaking of Birth Control.²³  In the pamphlet title ‘lawful’ refers to morality not legality.

What of Lawful Birth Control explains and defends the Catholic method on birth control which is abstinence within a marriage either for short periods or long periods.  Hall promotes the rhythm method and believes in its effectiveness, although he does not explain how it is supposed to work.  Hall makes the distinction between artificial birth control which is not morally lawful and natural birth control which is.

Today in discussing birth control some people make the argument that unmarried people engaging in sex should use artificial birth control with the argument that is the lesser of two evils: the dangers of unprotected sex outweigh the moral dangers of sex outside of marriage.  Lord of course would never make such arguments, always seeing marriage as the only legitimate place for sex.  Because Lord always saw sex as having the power to create human beings with immortal souls and an eternal destiny he insisted it should be used very carefully and only in marriage.

In Lord’s days there were great risks for not being sexually responsible.  Although AIDS was not one of them, the other STDs existed and in the pre-penicillin days were not treatable.  Penicillin comes into use in the early 1940s.  However the penalties for violating the social norms were often extreme.  Getting pregnant out of wedlock could lead to social ostracism of the mother and child.  In many cases it could also destroy a woman’s chance for marriage and a career.

Social Order Mondays

The St. Louis Post Dispatch covered the talks and quoted Daniel Lord:

Precisely the trouble with all those who are trying to save our civilization, Father Lord said, is that they are tinkering with externals—with shower baths and constitutions, with elevators and economic experiments—and doing nothing to improve the civilization in the heart of the individual man....

In our effort to save .civilization ... it is most unimportant that we struggle to save the external forms that surround man.  Civilization can exist on the scientific farm or in a garden plowed with a charred stick; under the Constitution of the United States or in the patriarchal tribe; where a rotary press grinds out daily papers or a quill pen composes a ‘Divine Comedy’; in Hollywood or in a school of medieval troubadours.

The marks of a civilized man, Father Lord said, are: that he knows his essential importance and the importance of every human being, no matter what his race or position; that he knows his obligations and responsibilities toward his fellow men; and that he remembers his essential relationships to a creator and to an immortal destiny.  Men must be educated to see and appreciate the things of real value in their lives, and there is nothing so valuable as love and service, Father Lord said.  They must be trained to self-discipline if they are to live at peace with their fellows.  They must be re-taught their correct relationships to God, to state, to Church.  These things will save what is worth saving in civilization.²⁴

Education and Religion

Around this time Lord sent a list of suggestions on teaching religion to William McGucken, S.J., a Professor of Pedagogy.  McGucken wrote two books for Husslein’s A University In Print: The Catholic Way in Education (1934) and The Jesuits and Education (1932)).  Here is a summary of Lord’s main points:

The psychological idea back of this course (in religion) is this: Arguments and proofs are often forgotten; convictions and atmosphere and inspiration are more likely to last.

. . .

The course is built on the following theories:

1. That the modern student finds abstract thinking difficult.

2. That religion can be made much more appealing if it is centered on the personality of Christ—on the principle that people are more attractive and influential than doctrines unconnected with their author.

3. That Christ is the real center of our religion and of all religion—and has in too many cases been entirely -subordinated to His own doctrines.

4. That from Christ it is easy to lead into the Church, not as an institution merely but as the Mystical Body of Christ carrying on His work.

5. That around the personality of Christ one can throw all the essential doctrines of the faith.

6. Through this the student can be made familiar with the New Testament, now a closed book to most of our students.

7. That seeing religion lived by Christ, the student is more likely to understand that it must be loved and how it must be lived by himself.²⁵

Thomas Gavin commented: This list reads like a position paper for the decrees of Vatican Council II.²⁶  As shown in the sixteen documents of the council, at Vatican II the Catholic Church reconnected to its roots in the gospels and the person of Jesus Christ.

At a December meeting of Jesuit deans, Lord presented his ideas on improving religion at colleges.

1. It is desirable to make not only the Student Counselor but also his associates on the faculty responsible for religious activities.

2. Religion in the college should not consist in merely answering student problems, but should be aimed at teaching the student how to live his religion.

3. The introduction of religion departments and full-time religion teachers would help greatly.

4. Attendance at daily mass should not be compulsory but should be part of a program provided for and by the students.

5. There should be a faculty group established for training lay faculty members to be guides of students.

6. The sodality should be a small organization of active leaders who instill Catholic ideals in the entire student body.²⁷

The fact that Lord had to suggest these ideas indicates what was missing at many Catholic colleges.  Gavin noted, Another quarter of a century would pass before these suggestions were implemented.²⁸

More Satire by Daniel Lord

Lord also wrote the song My Sweet Prophylactical Child for one of his shows but it was never performed.  ‘Prophylactical’ means ‘sanitized.’  Some might find this song relevant today:

My Sweet Prophylactical Child

  

He’s never been kissed by his mother,

  A germ might be carried by that;

His father may pet him, the nurses will let him,

If he wears rubber gloves for the pat.

He plays with no puppy or kitten,

  For hotbeds of microbes they’re styled.

They give for his prattle a sterilized rattle,

This sweet prophylactical child.

  

His food, predigested and tasteless,

Is cooked in a chemist’s retort.

His clothes must be baked and his thirst must be slaked

  With a drink of some pasteurized sort.

His muscles are flexed to a system;

Aseptic the paint on his toy.

They guard him from peril with everything sterile,

This dear, prophylactical boy.

  

His father gives place to a doctor;

  His mother is barred by a nurse.

‘Twixt serum and tonic, no passing or chronic

  Disease can have time to grow worse.

Of course any talk of affection

  Or love is amusingly droll.

His body’s looked after; we mention with laughter

His non-prophylactical soul.²⁹

NOTES

•   ¹ Lord, Daughters of Victory, script in the Jesuit Archives.
•   ² Florence, 97.
•   ³ Ibid., 141.
•   ⁴ Ibid., 154-55.  Hennesey gives an overview of the conflict in American Catholics, 250-51.  See Dinges, ‘An Army of Youth, 43.
•   ⁵ Lord, The Church is Out of Date, (QW, 1935), 5.
•   ⁶ Ibid., 21.
•   ⁷ Ibid., 11.
•   ⁸ Ibid., 27.
•   ⁹ Ibid., 27-28.
• ¹⁰ Sparr, To Promote, 177 note 10.
• ¹¹ Lord, Everybody’s Talking About Heaven (QW, 1935), 3.
• ¹² Ibid., 28-30.
• ¹³ Lord, How to Pick a Successful Career (QW, 1935), 5.
• ¹⁴ Ibid., 4.
• ¹⁵ Ibid., 28.
• ¹⁶ Lord, That Made Me Smile, 159.
• ¹⁷ Lord, Of Dirty Stories (QW, 1935.), 9-10.
• ¹⁸ Ibid., 11-12.  This pamphlet contains several typos: p. 7: immortal instead of immoral; p. 12: abnormalties; p. 19: betray instead of betrays.  These typos are only noteworthy in that are the very rare exceptions.
• ¹⁹ Ibid., 22.
• ²⁰ Ibid., 29.
• ²¹ Lord, Pardon My Manners (QW, 1935.), 11.
• ²² Lord, The Successful Failure (QW, 1935), 32.
• ²³ Lord, What of Lawful Birth Control? (QW, 1935).
• ²⁴ Ibid., 156-157, quoting the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 17, 1935.
• ²⁵ Gavin, 113.
• ²⁶ Ibid.
• ²⁷ Ibid., 114; Quote edited slightly.
• ²⁸ Ibid.
• ²⁹ Barmann, 118.

Chapter 17    Chapter 19

Copyright 2021 Stephen Werner