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THE  RESTLESS  FLAME,  DANIEL  LORD,  S.J.

Thinking Big in a Parochial World


Chapter 18    Chapter 20


EXTRA   MATERIAL

Chapter Nineteen - 1936
Writing an Encyclical

A Story Told by Daniel Lord

Modern and Literal


The rather ambitious catechism teacher asked the children to draw a picture of God driving Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden.  It never occurred to her that the word drive could mean something so very different to the modern youngster.

So one of the children in all seriousness brought her a picture of God at the wheel of an old Ford, with Adam Eve, disconsolate in the back seat, being sadly driven out of Eden.1

Life in 1936

In the fall of 1935 in East Harlem 18 year old Nina Cassotto became pregnant.  She was unmarried.  She gave birth to Walden Robert on May 16, 1936.  Because of the scandal of the illegitimate birth, Nina and her mother Polly Walden moved.  In their new surroundings the boy was raised by Polly as her son and Nina became the boy’s sister.  At age 32 the boy learned the truth.  He was devastated.  By this time he had become the great singer, Bobby Darin, with his hit songs Splish Splash, Beyond the Sea, and his classic Mack the Knife.

When reading Daniel Lord’s traditional and Catholic views about marriage and sex one must keep in mind the times.  In those days the consequences of out-of-wedlock pregnancies could be devastating for mothers and children.  It led to actions such as those of Nina and Polly to cover up the truth in those intolerant and unforgiving times.

Another strategy was to send unmarried pregnant girls away to special homes to stay until they gave birth and then gave up their babies for adoption.  The Catholic Church ran many such homes around the country and also provided the necessary adoption services to find homes for the babies.  The girl would return home and often she and her family would cover up the reason for her absence because the shame of being unmarried and pregnant was so great.  Today for many people there is far less or no scandal for out-of-wedlock births.

Sodality Statistics

The 1936 Queen’s Work mailing list gives an idea of how many Sodalities were active:


Women’s Parish Sodalities3,144
Men’s Parish Sodalities314
Grammar School Sodalities525
High School Sodalities 1440
College Sodalities201
Nursing School Sodalities397
Other Sodalites87

There may have been another four hundred Sodalities since co-ed schools had one for boy and one for girls.

Also the Queen’s Work had cards on all existing Sodalities, though many were not on the mailing list: 8811 Parish Sodalities, 1540 School Sodalities, for a total of 10,351 Sodalities.  The School Sodalities may be undercounted since a Sodality at parish grade school may have been counted as a Parish Sodality.

Pamphlets of 1936

Atheism Doesn’t Make Sense

Forever and Forever

It’s All So Beautiful

The Sacrament of Catholic Action: Confirmation

The Society That Looks to the Parish,

What Birth Control Is Doing to the United States

What Catholicity and Communism Have in Common

Your Partner in Marriage

For Us the Christmas Joy.

Atheism Doesn’t Make Sense

Daniel Lord Pamphlet Atheism Doesn't Make Sense
       Back Cover           Front Cover

Atheism Doesn’t Make Sense is another straightforward pamphlet in which Lord answers the typical criticisms brought against religion by atheists.  It would sell over 220,000 copies with 25 printings by 1963.  Admittedly, Lord might be describing the arguments of less sophisticated atheists.  Lord uses four of the proofs for God of Aquinas: motion, efficient cause, possibility and necessity, and design.  However, he does not name them and uses them in his own language with his own examples to make them very understandable.  Lord regrets that those who have been exposed to the ideas of Immanuel Kant cannot accept reason-based arguments for the existence of God.

Most of the pamphlet talks about general atheist arguments against God, but Lord but also decries the atheism of communism, Nazism, and fascism.

We have watched nazism turning from the Christian God back to the beer-swilling gods of the Teuton days, simply because Nazism knows that those fat-bellied, lustful, blood-thirsty old gods do not exist and hence cannot do any unpleasant or annoying interfering with despotism and ruthlessness and persecution and violence of human rights, which Nazi leaders mean to continue as their policy.  Fascism, though it is shrewd enough to make an offhand bow to God, really substitutes for Him an ancient pagan equivalent, the all powerful, all dominant state.2

Lord also attacks the atheism of modern business: To the ruthless capitalist God says: ‘You are merely a steward of the wealth you hold, and you dare not use it otherwise than for the happiness of those who work for you.  The oppression of laborers and the robbing of widows and working men cry out to me for vengeance.’3

Lord speaks of the atheist’s objection that evolution proves that God does not exist: But he does not like to be reminded that evolution without someone behind it directing the most elaborate and complicated progression, from simple to infinitely complex and multiplied, is as meaningless as an airplane left on the floor of the museum in the expectation that year after year it will produce better and more perfect planes.4 As stated earlier, Lord accepted evolution but believed there had to be a God guiding it.  Lord also rejected ‘brute evolution’ which denied the human soul.

Lord gives his final argument against atheism: I repeat with all the conviction I possess: ‘People do not give up God because there are arguments against his existence; they give up God because they object to His law.’5


In Forever and Forever Glen Murray—normally a sound sleeper—is tossing and turning after his date with Phyllis.  He truly loves her and wants to marry her but she divorced Phil six months ago.  Glen is a six-year lapsed Catholic.  He wonders, what it means to love Phyllis forever and forever.  This is longer than life in prison.  He was a prosecuting attorney.  Forever was longer than human history.

He imagines what she might say, As long as we love each other: that will be our forever.  Beyond that, who cares?6  But then he starts worrying about immortality.  He wonders if we would be gambling a few years with Phyllis in exchange for eternity as the cell of one’s endless but solitary confinement, where no turnkey, Death, entered to unbolt the door.7

Almost he felt as if he had been given a gambler’s hunch, the hunch to play his coin, the prospects of an immediate happiness in order to win forever and forever.  If he played his coin upon Phyllis (he drew back from the crudeness of the phrase; then plunged his mind relentlessly into it), if he played his coin upon Phyllis and lost and there was a forever, a forever in which he would sit, imprisoned with no releasing jailer, sick with no merciful death, a failure with no chance to retrieve lost fortunes—forever sick of himself, sick of his failure, tormented as failures are tormented and knowing that not next year, nor after a million years nor after a hundred billion, nor after the sun’s fire had cooled to a cold ash, and the last planet was sifted in fine dust vaguely through barren space, would it end for him or for his memory and his bitterness.8

He gets up and writes a letter to Phyllis, presumably breaking it off, and he goes to see a priest.  Apparently Lord thought that Glen was risking eternal damnation by marrying this divorced woman.  Admittedly, this is pretty harsh material.

It’s All So Beautiful

In It’s All So Beautiful Julia and Bill return from their Honeymoon in Europe on a ship.  One day sitting in the deck chairs they get into a discussion with an old poet.  They talk about the beautiful Catholic cathedrals and paintings in Europe.  The poet wonders, Why a church whose doctrines are so ugly and repellent should be able to produce an architecture and an art.9  The knowledgeable and articulate Catholic couple defend the beauty of Catholic teachings even regarding hell, sin, and death on a cross.

They talk about the beauty that humans have souls and the beauty that humans have free will.  And hell is the risk we run for the sake of our beautiful freedom and our beautiful immortality in heaven.10  They go on to describe the beauty of supernatural life, the incarnation, the sacraments, and Catholic marriage. Julia points out that most of the criticisms of the Catholic Church are based on ignorance.  In the end Julia offers the poet a bet that if he really looks at Catholic teaching he will find that it is all beautiful.  He leaves to think it over.

This is another Lord pamphlet as The Great American Catholic Apologist although he lets the happily married Julia and Bill do the talking.


In The Sacrament of Catholic Action: Confirmation Lord shares his bold vision:

We are at the beginning of an era of transition.  The faithful have moved, so to speak, from the pews into the forefront of the struggle for Christ against His enemies in every field of human activity: finance, business, the professions, the world of entertainment, literature, the arts, sports.  They have left the safe and cloistered seclusion of their own little private Cenacles to lead lives of startlingly clear and emphatic Christianity.  Christ must be advanced into factory and executive office.  The principles of Christ must be applied to politics and government.  Christ can no longer be excluded from even the theater and the playing field.  The kingdom of Christ is to be as extensive as are all forms of human activity.  Priests Alone Cannot Make This A Reality.  So The Holy father has called upon laymen and women to help the priests.11

Lord’s pamphlet The Society that Looks to the Parish, a reprint of an article in The Ecclesiastical Review, is a plug for the Sodality or Our Lady at the local parish.  Lord includes a section Exclusively Controlled by Bishop, because he saw it as essential that Sodalities be under their local bishops.  In the section Why a Dull Sodality? he argues that Sodalities should be vibrant and interesting.  In this pamphlet ‘society’ does not refer to society at large but rather a Sodality society.12


What Birth Control Is Doing to the United States is Lord’s third pamphlet on the subject.13  Lord tackles all the practical arguments for the promotion of birth control.  In particular he rejects concerns about over-population.  Rather he gives statistics on declining birth rates and expresses concerns about countries that cannot replace their populations.

Lord wonders what will be the long term effect on population if the better people are using birth control.  Lord rejects arguments that birth control will reduce unemployment.  Subtitles include: A Race of Elders, Better Families?, and The End Justifies the Means?.  In later years this pamphlet would be reprinted and Clement Mihanovich the St. Louis Sociologist would provide updated statistics.


Your Partner in Marriage is about having the right attitude toward marriage.  People should think of marriage as a career that involves years of hard work, struggle, and rewards.  Marriage is not a side line.  Lord describes young women: They snap at a possible catch like a hungry trout at a fascinating fly, paying little heed to the possible presence of a barb beneath the glowing colors.14

Lord laments that some young couples think that if they can get the beginning right everything will fall into place.

Marriage, I repeat, is a career.  But the dear young idiots who enter it have the silly idea that the start is everything.  The courtship is the important thing.  The honeymoon is essential.  But after that?.  Oh marriage will take care of itself.  It is the only career that does not need thought and experience and practice in a struggle for constant improvement.15
Brilliant beginners are beyond count.  Those who achieve ultimate success are few indeed.16
It will continue to be a failure until people remember that it is not an adventure but a job, not a pleasure trip for a week but a career meant to last for life.17

Your Partner in Marriage would sell over 218,000 copies and go through 32 printings.  Young people today might find this pamphlet a valuable read.

Vigilanti Cura

While in Rome, Lord wrote the Papal Encyclical on the movies: Vigilanti Cura.  Papal encyclicals are documents released in the name of the Pope.  They are often written by others and issued in the Pope’s name.  The existence of the writers and their identities are kept secret.  Although encyclicals are the highest level of Catholic Church teaching they vary a great deal in terms of the importance of the issues covered, the detail or lack of detail of the teaching, the style, the method of argument, and references to other church teachings and sources.

In Vigilanti Cura Pius XI addresses the Archbishops and Bishops of the United States.  The title means ‘vigilant care.’.  The encyclical describes the Legion of Decency as a prudent initiative launched as a holy crusade.

The encyclical mentions the 1930 Code and its failure, and praises the creation of the Legion of Decency.  The impact of the Legion is that movies are better and the industry is doing better financially.  The encyclical notes:

The essential purpose of art, its raison d’etre, is to assist in the perfecting of the moral personality, which is man.18

Recreation must be worthy of the rational nature of man and therefore must be morally healthy.19

Everyone knows what damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures.  They are occasions of sin; they seduce young people along the ways of evil by glorifying the passions; they show life under a false light; they cloud ideals; they destroy pure love, respect for marriage and affection for the family.  They are capable also of creating prejudices among individuals, misunderstandings among nations, among social classes, and entire races.20

Moreover, the acting out of the plot is done by men and women selected for their art, for all those natural gifts, the employment of those expedients, which can become for youth particularly, the instruments of seduction.  Further, the motion picture has enlisted in its service luxurious appointments, pleasing music, the vigor of realism and every form of whim and fancy.  For this very reason it attracts and fascinates particularly the young, adolescent, or even the child.  Thus at the very age when moral sense is being formed, when notions and sentiments of justice and rectitude, of duty, obligation and ideals of life are being developed, the motion picture, with its propaganda, assumes the position of commanding influence.21

The encyclical calls for the bishops to be vigilant in opposing immoral movies and appeals to Catholics in the film industry.  It notes the need to produce lists of appropriate films and for a yearly pledge by Catholics in their parish churches to avoid immoral pictures.

Thomas Gavin in Champion of Youth relates the amusing story of Lord giving a talk on the encyclical and then having to listen silently as the next speaker claimed that Lord had misunderstood the document’s meaning and intent.22

Lord when writing Played by Ear did not mention the encyclical.

The Jesuits sources who knew Lord state that he wrote the encyclical.  However, Martin Quigley claimed or implied credit for creating it.  Several books on the 1930 Code pick up this inaccurate view.23

More on Lord’s Trip to Europe

Lord visited Vienna and noted:

Austria is extremely interesting to a newcomer, just as a political curiosity.  It is, of course, the main victim of the Versailles Treaty, which Treaty, one finds, explains a lot that is inexplicable from the distance.  What a fool they made of poor old Wilson in the Hall of mirrors!.  The Treaty is responsible for the fact that Vienna built to be at the capital of an empire of the seven million people, now live surrounded by the meager remnants of his former Empire.24

Lord described his brief visit to Paris and his experience of the Louvre.  Three times in Paris he saw signs that read Down with the Jews.  He visited Les Invalides and noted, The whole thing seemed the most magnificent and skillful attempt to keep a sweet and peaceful nation keyed up to the bugle call of war.25

In London Lord visited Westminster Abbey.  In My European Diary Lord has much to say about the Roman Catholic heritage of England prior to Henry VIII.  Needless to say, Lord did not think the Church of England had improved things.

Lord got a tour of the British Museum by Claude Heithaus, S.J., who had been his student and protégé in St. Louis at the university.  Lord also visited the Ladies of the Grail.  In Dublin Lord had a meeting the Premier of Ireland, Éamon de Valera.

During the trip Lord realized how dead Catholic Action was in Europe.  Later he would write:

I found, as I said, the Europeans situation on Catholic Action thoroughly confused and disconcerting.  Italy doing nothing except on paper; France completely inactive; Belgium and Holland the only hope; Catholic Action largely a paper thing and the clergy in general uninterested and frequently unwilling to accept lay help.  See Spain for effects. . . .26

Lord seems to be unaware of the Fascist efforts to take over and control Catholic Action in Italy and turn it into a support for Fascism.  Also, in comparison to Europe, Lord’s efforts in the United States might have been the biggest and most active attempt to develop and promote true Catholic Action in the world.

Songs and Skits in The Social Order Follies

1. Opening Chorus The Song of the Whites and Reds

(The Whites):

Good evening, Mr. Ritz,

And Mrs. Vanderschnitz;

And Mrs. Forest Park and Mr. Cages.

Isn’t it nice to know where you look

There are people from the Blue Book?

All our names are written in the Social Pages.

(The Reds):

Good evening, Mr. Trotski,

Mrs. Emma Not-so-hot-ski,

Mr. Blum and Mrs. Run-around-the-town-ski.

All the brave who do their stunt

For the bold, united front,

And whose names you simply can’t pronounce-ski.

(The Whites):

We’re surprised to see you patronize

This Red, subversive enterprise:

We hear this is a Social Order Follies.

And all Noble, true conservatives

Will use the best preservatives

To keep these chaps from slipping off their trolleys.

(The Reds):

These retrogressive dabblers here,

These retroversive babblers here

Who plan to do a Social Order Follies,

Are so blank-blank conservative

They really don’t deserve to live,

Let’s fling ‘em to the dogs — we don’t mean collies.

2. In My Efficiency (A musical skit about a tiny efficiency apartment.)
3. The March of Crime
4. We’re The Party of the Opposition
5. What’s the Use of Moonlight?

BOY: What’s the use of moonlight when you’re all alone and broke?

What the use of starlight

Or of Love?

What’s the use of sunsets

When your bank account’s a joke,.

And a job is all you’re dreaming of.

Brush away the stardust

With its tricky, silver beams;

Push the moon from off

Its silver throne.

All the world is weary, darlin’,

Dark and dull and dreary,

When you’re broke and all alone.

6. Dance of the Machine (A ballet with women as moving parts of an industrial machine.)
Daniel Lord Pamphlet Atheism Doesn't Make Sense
7. City Hall Sketch
8. We Are the Raspberry Shirts (A satire on the black and brown shirt fascists.)
9. I Bring a Basket to the Poor (A sketch about wealthy women giving baskets to the poor but ignoring the economic causes of poverty.)
10. My Dearest (A song by the St. Elizabeth’s group.)
11. Just Dance (A dance by the St. Elizabeth’s group.)
12. White Man What’s My Place?
13. Radio Skits
14. Here’s My Hand
15. Women of the Spanish Revolution
16. The Irish Green Pastures (In 1946 Lord would publish this as How the Fairies Came to Ireland.)
17. Closing Chorus

The Squabble over What Catholicity and Communism Have in Common

Catchy titles were key to Lord’s pamphlets: he had a strong marketing sense.  The title What Catholicity and Communism Have in Common was a typical attention-grabber.  However this pamphlet caught the attention of the prominent Father Edward Lodge Curran of Brooklyn, who condemned the pamphlet and called for silencing of Lord.  On an April 14, 1936 radio broadcast entitled Comfort for the Enemy, he railed:

By what right does the author place at the top of his cover design a cross and at the bottom of his cover design the hammer and sickle?  The very title of this Queen's Work pamphlet will comfort Communists at home and abroad.  The publication of this pamphlet...is the most disastrous event in the present world of Catholic Action.... In title, in cover design and in content this pamphlet is the most dangerous and misleading publication ever printed in America.... I beg the Bishops and clergy of America to stop its distribution throughout our Catholic colleges and high schools.  I beg the pastors of America to keep it out of the pamphlet racks.  Write your protest to the author's superior.  Write your protest to the bishop of your diocese.27

Many people wrote letters.  The Archbishop of St. Louis, admitting he had not read the pamphlet, got cold feet about having given his imprimatur.  Lord’s provincial had the original Jesuit censors of the pamphlet go over it again.  They rejected all the charges by Curran.  Lord’s Provincial stood behind him.



NOTES



Chapter 18    Chapter 20

  

Copyright 2021 Stephen Werner