Home The Book STL Religion Research Project Contact

THE  RESTLESS  FLAME,  DANIEL  LORD,  S.J.

Thinking Big in a Parochial World


Chapter 24    Chapter 26


EXTRA   MATERIAL

Chapter Twenty-five - 1946
Buying a White Elephant

The Queen’s Work and the SSCA in 1946

The call to the priesthood and the religious life today is directed straight to heroes and heroines.  It is their challenge to a hard and splendid life.  It is the summons to possible martyrdom.1

Pamphlets of 1946


Lord wrote thirteen pamphlets published in 1946:

About Divorce

The Chance of a Lifetime

Is Religion Bad for Your Mind?

Love Is Like That

Love Was Born on Christmas Day

The Madonna in Art; Mary of the United States

Mother of the United Nations

Parenthood: The Most Important Profession in the World

The Story of Jesus

Then There’s the Prodigal Son

We Pick Books for a Desert Island

Who’s Pushing Your Mind Around?

and They Call It Little Christmas as his annual Christmas Pamphlet


The Summary on the inside cover introduces the pamphlet About Divorce:

That the Catholic Church opposes divorce is not news.  That the modern world seems to be going haywire in its attitude toward divorce is very clear.  Can you convince the world of its stupidity in this matter?  Father Lord thinks you can—and in this pamphlet he tells you how.2

Lord wrote this as a sequel to his 1942 pamphlet, Divorce: A Picture From the Headlines.  This first was a catalog of examples; this one gets at the reasons behind Catholic teaching.  Lord of course quotes the teachings of Jesus on divorce and remarriage.  He then explains that although the Catholic Church accepts divorce when there is sufficient reason such as abuse or intolerable misuse, the church will not allow a divorced person to remarry because that would undermine marriage itself.  If the door to divorce can be open for any reason at all, it soon can be opened for every reason or none?3

Lord, like many others, saw marriage and family as the foundations of society.  Thus allowing easy divorce and remarriage would ultimately undermine society.  In a typical Lord turn of phrase he laments, Hasn’t that recurrently blondined matron collected husbands almost as she might collect charms for a charm bracelet?4 and They went through the convenient form of marriage with one eye on the exit.  Every marriage license was accompanied with a rain check.5

Is Religion Bad for Your Mind?

Is Religion Bad for Your Mind?: An Interview with Raphael C. McCarthy, S.J., a popular university teacher.  McCarthy does two things: he answers writers who insist that religion is fundamentally bad for people and he recognizes those people whose religion and religious ideas are unhealthy.

McCarthy responds to Freud and others by arguing that they have a distorted view of religion.

We would concede that if religion were what these people say it is—simply an outgrowth of primitive fears and the crystallization of primitive ignorance, or the expression of the craving for a mythical sense of omnipotence—the sooner we got rid of religion, the better.6

McCarthy holds that religion is objective: It is a body of beliefs that are accepted because they have been revealed by God and are forced upon man by logical philosophical reasons.7  Thus far we have seen the attack on religion as harmful to the mind when that attack is based on a false explanation of what is meant by religion.8  However,

You cannot blame religion for people’s crazy ideas about religion.  You cannot say that religion is harmful if people occasionally go insane because they cling to an idea that religion does not teach or they foster a practice that religion regards as ridiculous.9

McCarthy readily recognizes those who suffer from religious delusions under the subtitle, Queer Before:

Another point must be noted: many mental patients who show religious delusions had a long-established interest in queer, exaggerated, bizarre types of religions and religious practices.  Theirs was, not sound religion, but slightly mad religion.10

McCarthy also admits that many people have received bad religious training.

Yet religion often plays a role in helping people:

Many an honest man who works with the mentally ill realizes that religion is a great force in the cure and prevention of mental diseases.  Skilled psychiatrists are glad when their patients have some religion, even though the psychiatrists themselves may not practice any religion.  If a patient believes in God or a future life, the psychiatrist has new hope for curing them.11

Finally McCarthy notes:

The non-Catholic psychiatrist has in many cases paid tribute to the enormously helpful influence of the Catholic confessional.  It is a safeguard of mental sanity.  In most salutary fashion it protects people’s emotional nature.12

Love is Like That

In Love is Like That Lord relates a presumably true story of love at first sight, which Lord admits is not typical.  On the eve of World War II, at a party at the country club, Sheila Durant meets Otto Prange.  They fall instantly in love.  In the ensuing weeks there love deepens.13

Otto is a doctor who had fled Vienna, Austria because his efforts to defend his country and Catholic Church made him a target of the Nazis.  Despite their love Otto will not marry Sheila.  He will return to Vienna to continue the struggle.  Sheila agrees to wait.  He leaves and . . .  (You will have to read the pamphlet to find out what happens.)


Always looking for a new approach, Lord wrote Love was Born on Christmas Day, The Madonna in Art, and The Story of Jesus.14  All were published by Barton-Cotton, Inc., of Baltimore and included images of famous paintings of Mary and Jesus.  Very likely the publisher had the expensive plates to print color images for others books and wanted to get another use of them.  Love was Born is a pamphlet of prayers.  The Madonna in Art includes seventeen paintings of Mary done by the masters with a Foreword by Lord.  The Story of Jesus includes short reflections written by Lord to go with the paintings.

Mary of the United States, Mother of the United Nations

Lord wrote Mary of the United States, Mother of the United Nations on the centennial of the America bishops dedicating America to Mary.  Writing in the aftermath of World War II Lord wrote:

We dream these days of a better and brighter world, while across the earth ride the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who have abandoned their slow-footed horses in favor of tanks and planes and a seat astride V-2s.  Indeed in moments of nightmare we seem to hear the echoes of the last wars final trumpets blending with a flourish of bugles announcing the next war.15
This is the story of the woman of the year . . . of any year . . . more particularly of the mother of the United States, of the United Nations, of the atomic age.  There are no news photos of her, but she is reproduced in thousands of statues and paintings . . . and her beauty is reflected in you in proportion to your love of her, the mother of United Nations.16

The title, Parenthood: The Most Important Profession in the World, summarizes this pamphlet.  However compared with most professions, parents typically receive no training.  Lord laments Delinquent Parents?:

No wonder the human race is overrun with children who grew into the kind of adults that stumble through life. . . . We all suffer from the children of parents who, knowing nothing of the profession of parenthood, brought into the world babies who remained complete mysteries to their parents during the years that they should have been trained to strong adolescence and competent adulthood.17

Lord gives an insightful discussion into Three Important Factors that affect how children develop: free will, heredity, and environment.  Lord stresses the importance of the concept of free will, but notes the importance of parents creating a good environment for their children.  In particular Lord notes the value of education of children in their early years by their parents.  Lord sees two environments as destructive: extreme poverty and extreme wealth.  Lord believed in the importance of the middle class.

Finally Lord notes that parents have a thousand competitors for their children’s attention such as the movie theater, the radio, and the roller skating rink.  How many more things would Lord list today?

Then There’s the Prodigal Son

In Then There’s the Prodigal Son Dick and Sue have come to Lakeside for duck hunting.  They sit around the fire in Father Hall’s living room and talk.  Father Hall mentions that Cinderella is the most popular story because it is retold in many forms in books, plays, and movies.  However he states that The Prodigal Son is the greatest story.  It’s a wonderful story, and it’s told as only the greatest storyteller in the world could have told it.  Listen.18  Hall then reads the story to them and explains its meaning.

Then Hall describes a novel he had in mind that describes the younger son several years later who gets restless and bored at home.  Then one day an old friend from the far country shows up to invite him back.  Hall does not know if he will finish the story because it is too realistic about people who fall back into their old ways.

In explaining the story of the Prodigal Son, Lord, speaking through Hall, misses the importance of the elder son’s unwillingness to forgive his younger brother.  This actually might be the point of the story which Jesus aimed a religious people who had always led good, moral, and devout lives yet resented the idea of Jesus that God would forgive serious sinners and welcome them back with open arms.


In We Pick Books For A Desert Island Lord gives guidance for choosing reading material and building a library.  Unfortunately he does not name many specific books.  Of course he recommends the Bible and reading the Psalms, Proverbs, and Book of wisdom.

Lord notes that two fiction books would be not needed: How to Play the Stock Market Successfully and How to Make Money Betting on Horses.

Who’s Pushing Your Mind Around?

Who’s Pushing Your Mind Around? is another straightforward and insightful pamphlet, still relevant today, about how we take the suggestions of others and let them influence us.  The pamphlet covers many topics such as prejudice, faith-healing, mob psychology, the role of drink and drugs, and advertising.

Advertising is the triumph of mass suggestion on the popular mind.  It is based on our ability to gulp down mental suggestion.  And how we gulp it!

One chemical firm for instance began by building up a massive fear of halitosis.  Another invented the initials B.O.  After the advertising had suggested that probably everyone in the world was thus afflicted and that one’s nearest and dearest were reluctant to mention our defect to us, the companies began campaigns.19  [‘B.O’ for ‘body odor’ was created by advertisers.]

Queen's Work Graphic: Getting a Baseball Autograph

This pamphlet, another interview with Raphael McCarthy, was reprinted as A Cure For Amateur Psychiatrists.  He states:

Mental suggestion, or simply suggestion, is easy to understand: it is just the unreflecting acceptance of another person’s ideas.  Or to put it another way: It is the mental process which results when someone takes another person’s ideas without any reason or logic for accepting them and then acts upon them without deliberation.  It’s a kind of thought without thinking.  It’s certainly action without reason behind it.20

The Chance of A Lifetime

The Chance of a Lifetime is one of Lord’s more important pamphlets.  He first considered God Wants You But Don’t Get Scared as the title.  Written on the train to California with his typewriter on his knees, Daniel Lord as The Great American Catholic Salesman takes his pitch for priesthood and the religious life to a whole new level.  Not just one more pamphlet on religious vocations, this is Lord’s bold vision for the future.

This booklet is being written in the year 1945.  The war—in Europe and in the Pacific—will soon be receding memory.  So some of the heroes and heroines who have done so much to demonstrate the courage and virtue of America may pick this booklet up, page through it curiously, and find—is it too much to ask?—that God is offering them a chance in a lifetime.21
Young people have for the last two decades lived through exciting times.  I have seen them jazz with the boom years, lift their chins in unexpected courage during the depression era, hesitate and grow confused during the misty days when it was fashionable to be unpatriotic, and then jump into uniform to prove themselves the world’s finest fighting men or face the problems of world war in order to prove themselves the women most worth fighting for.22
This is a booklet for heroes and heroines.  All others will waste their time if they read it.23

The part played by young people in the war has been pretty wonderful.  We can say in all modesty that they have done their full share, that they have given us a most generous quota of heroes and heroines.  Our boys have died with a smile, a jest, and a prayer.  Our women have sent their men off to battle and refused to shed the tears that burned back of their eyeballs.  We have seen our supposedly slack and indifferent American citizens stop making demands upon their country and of a sudden demanding to know what further they could give in personal sacrifice and labor.  We have proudly decorated our heroic living.  We have knelt to honor our heroic dead.

Oh we have had our share of cowards, of worthless ones.  We have known black markets and smart outmaneuvering of the draft boards; gold-brickers who licked boots instead of nazis and Japs; women who wailed and sulked because they had to live for a few months in a manless world.  The fact that we have regarded them with contempt is proof that we did not like their type.  We did not like the slack in nerve or the loose in courage.

So quite easily and rightly I can start this booklet with a challenge to the highest heroism a man or woman can show.24

Admittedly Lord had an idealized idea of what the war was like—as did many—that ignored the harsh and brutal realities in which most soldiers do not find much that was heroic.

Lord quotes from letters he has received:

When the war is over, I’m enlisting in the cause of Christ.  Where can I find a religious order that will help me to continue to fight the evil forces I have come to hate?  Peace will seem dull after the battles I have known; I want to put on a new uniform in the army of the Savior.25

Lord notes that sometimes people who enter the sanctuary or convent are accused of cowardice for trying to escape the real world.  Plausible as it may sound, it turns out to be the most arrant nonsense.26  Lord offers his Tough Invitation:  I should want fighting men and women prepared to enter the toughest battle the world can ever know, the struggle of God against evil, of right against wrong, of the powers of light against the powers of darkness.27

Far from being the refuges of the timid weakling, the sanctuaries and the convents are going to turn out to be the foxholes from which heroes and heroines will roll back the assaults of the most savage foe.  The cloisters are not the abodes of the frightened; they are the pillboxes, the PT boats, the Marauders of God’s fighting army.28
You who accept the religious life can consider yourselves as having enlisted in Christ’s own regiments, with a guarantee of hard days and sleepless nights and the chance to hold the line against the continued blitz of God’s relentless foes.  You will have joined up with outfits that must fight the legions of hell and the fifth columnists of hell’s auxiliaries on earth for the sake of men’s souls and women’s virtues.29

In older pamphlets Lord talked about the happiness and sweetness of a religious vocation but now he is unsure whether that will appeal to a generation that had sacrificed for the war.  He makes a new appeal.

Right now the world is screaming aloud the opportunities that it will offer to the good and to the wise, for it is turning away revolted from the evil and foolish who misled it.  It is a world that for the sake of a cause has squandered unestimated billions of its resources, crushing what it regarded as oppression and lies and now looking with strained eyes toward the years that must prove worthy of the sacrifices that have been made.30

Lord predicts a new world in which a lawyer could be in Washington, London, Paris, Bombay, Shatung, and Melbourne within a week.  So the priest of the future will see the earth as his parish.31  Lord then goes lays out all the opportunities as the he calls for five times as many religious vocations:

The United States Army and Navy are clamoring for more and more chaplains, many of whom will be needed for years.  There isn’t a diocese that hasn’t developed since those relatively simple days—a decade and a half ago—priest editors, priests in youth work, priests trained for charity work, priests in the law courts, priests in rural-life projects, priests directing the Propagation of the Faith and the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, priests involved in the NCWC, priests managing Catholic hospitals, priests at the head of the great Catholic educational systems  32

Lord lays out his vision for the church of the future.

If ever the miracle happened and they had enough to staff their present classrooms and institutions, then they could really begin to do the work that is needed and of which they are capable.  The musical geniuses among them would have a chance to develop into great composers and performers.  The artists, thwarted at present, could paint their great paintings.  The religious scientists could spend the endless years that are demanded for real research.  The authors would have the chance to find the quiet in which to produce another Divine Comedy—or perhaps more simply even to write the long-awaited great American Catholic novel.33

Lord calls for more men and women for the missions: Yet we should be ashamed if we thought that more young marines had died in the taking of Iwo Jima for the United States than young priests and nuns had lived and died for the capturing of the entire Orient for the kingdom of Christ.34  Lord also talks about the possibility of martyrdom.  He summarizes the call:

Millions who are in danger of being exploited by commerce must be saved by charity.  Millions who may be misled by propaganda must be taught the truth.  Millions who may be subjugated by our superior mechanistic civilization must be raised to new dignity by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.35
The call to the priesthood and the religious life today is directed straight to heroes and heroines.  It is their challenge to a hard and splendid life.  It is the summons to possible martyrdom.36

In the next twenty years the number of priests and religious would reach all times highs and then begin a precipitous drop leading to a shortage of priests and an absence of sisters from so many schools and hospitals

Some wrongly blame Vatican II.  The real cause was that the world opened up.  Most Catholic young people did not see religious life as the exciting and demanding call that Lord had described. (And or coure, the biggest recruiter for vocations in the United States, Daniel Lord, would die in 1955.)

Shows of 1946

Daniel Lord created three shows in 1946: How The Fairies Came to Ireland, The Golden Dower, and Let’s Get Together.  How The Fairies Came to Ireland was originally a sketch in one of Lord’s Folly shows.


Synopsis

Lucifer, who speaks like an Englishman, wants to fight God.  Darby O Gill is reluctant to take sides so he and his lads build a tower to watch the battle and keep themselves safe.  They plan on joining the winners.  After the battle God addresses Darby:

GOD’s Voice: Well, Darby I certainly can’t keep you in heaven, since you didn’t fight for me.  And I can’t send you where I sent Lucifer and the rebel Angels, because you didn’t fight against me.  But . . (inexorably): but I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  I’ve just created down in space a little spinning ball of mud that I call Earth.  Run and go look at it.

Darby and the lads and Colleens go to Ireland to become fairies.

DARBY: At least it’s closer to heaven than any other place on earth.

The name ‘Darby O’Gill’ appears in the stories of British author Herminie Templeton Kavanagh: Darby O’Gill and the Good People (1903).  Lord apparently borrowed the name, which would show up in the 1959 movie Darby O’Gill and the Little People, staring a young Sean Connery in his pre-James Bond days.

The Golden Dower

Lord also wrote a charming little play, The Golden Dower.


Synopsis

The Herald announces that the PRINCE seeks a bride; however the worthy maiden must provide a dower of fifty golden coins.  ANGELA and TERRENA have only a copper coin each.37  When gypsies come, ANGELA and TERRENA both bet and win bags of fifty gold coins.

A man comes dragging a widow and her children.  She failed to pay rent.  TERRENA refuses to help, but ANGELA gives her 10 coins.  A slave dealer brings a young woman to sell.  Two merchants bid for her.  ANGELA buys her for fifteen coins and sets her free.  TERRENA refuses to help.

As ANGELA and TERRENA journey to the palace they find two frightened young sisters who have lost five coins and are afraid their step-mother will beat them.  ANGELA gives them five coins.  When a bridesmaid cannot marry the man she loves because his parents want a dower, ANGELA gives her ten coins.

They finally arrive at the palace where soldiers bring in a young indebted man to be made a galley slave.  ANGELA offers her last ten coins to buy his freedom.

The PRINCE enters to great cheers to choose his bride.  TERRENA comes forward to offer her gold, but the pickpockets have stolen her purse.

The PRINCE asked if maybe she had money to help those in need.  TERRENA says that she saved her gold for him.

PRINCE: And do you think, you heartless, cruel maid, That I would wed a miser for her gold?38

ANGELA admits that she has no coins.  The PRINCE asks if anyone has seen ANGELA’s golden dower.  The widow, the slave girl, the sisters, the bridesmaid with her lover, and the young man enter and return the coins given them by ANGELA.

PRINCE: ‘Twas I who sent along the maiden’s way
The poor, the prisoned, the little ones,
The heartbroken, the slaves.
Could she of cruel heart sit on my throne,
And rule my kingdom?  Nay a thousand times!
Only the gentle, true, unselfish maid
Ready to spend unselfishly the dower
Might be my chosen bride.
. . . .
And Angela is my bride forever more!39

Let’s Get Together

Lord had supported the League of Nations with his 1927 show A Call for Peace.  Now he supported the newly created United Nations with Let’s Get Together.

The struggle for the United Nations seems to me on a par with the struggle of our colonies for the United States; and no Catholic can be bitter against any honest attempt to make the nations lay aside their fierce and often senseless animosities, to substitute the council for the battlefield, discussion for bombings, and an ultimate union of interests for carefully cultivated and artfully whipped up hatreds.40

The script and score were both published by The Queen’s Work and McLaughlin & Reilly Co.  It was performed in Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis in January and sponsored by Jack and Jill of America, Inc. an African-American organization.  The proceeds of $1400 went to the March of Dimes to fight Polio.  Students from black Sumner High School and white Beaumont High School—both St. Louis Public Schools—performed.

For a modern reader this play presents a strange mix of being ahead of the times and a reflection of the times.  It shows far attitudes have changed for most people in the past 75+ years.  Furthermore, Lord is urging for the United Nations from a Christian perspective.


Synopsis

The show opens with a song:

Let’s get together,
Working together,
Strong in the loyal brotherhood of earth.
Shoulder to shoulder,
      God above us,
      Christ to love us,
Sharing our toil and mirth.41

The show has THE LADY, the Spirit of the United Nations; a CONSPIRATOR throwing a bomb that sends a dummy into the rafters; Native Americans singing We’re collegiate as skirts and baggy pants, Gone are arrows, bows, and quivers, Now we hit our foes with flivvers (Ford Model Ts); ethnic songs and dances: Italian, Russian, Spanish, Central European, and Brooklynese; a scene with African American performers; a traditional Minstrel scene; and a cute song, But East’s Not East in a Chinese Laundry:

AMERICAN WOMAN: Me know you alwa’ sayee, No tickee, No washee, so hullyuppee please and giveemee my tickee and comee Thursday me come backee and gettee washee.  Savee?42

CHINESE LAUNDRY MAN (wearily): Madam, I shall do my very best to accommodate you.  (To the audience.)  Dear me, what simply atrocious English these people persist in speaking.  Why don’t they go to college like me and learn their own language.43

The show ends with a hymn and the raising of the American flag.


No UN we would ever see
Without a USA.
. . .
God be with you, land of our Fathers,
Lighting all you ways;
. . .
Scorn we greed, the god of market,
Love we shining truth,
. . .
God be with your maidens and mothers,
Loved by stalwart men;
Ending war and filling the world
With fruitful peace.  Amen.44


In the words of Marshal McCluen, the medium is the message: Let’s Get Together, by the standards of the day, was a multiracial and multicultural performance.

A New Archbishop in St. Louis Fights Segregation

In February 1946 John J. Glennon who had served as archbishop of St. Louis since 1903 went to Rome to become a Cardinal. The 86 year Cardinal Glennon stopped in Ireland where he got sick and died. Joseph Elmer Ritter was chosen as the next archbishop, he would become Cardinal in 1961. A progressive, Ritter, would promote ecumenism and fight racism. In 1947 he desegregated Catholic schools and hospitals in St. Louis saying The cross on top of our schools must mean something, the equality of every soul before Almighty God.45

When a group of 700 white Catholics threatened to sue Ritter because his policy went against state law, Ritter wrote a pastoral letter that any Catholic who took him to court would be excommunicated. The group took no action. In the next decades Catholics who did not believe in integration simply moved out of neighborhoods when blacks moved in, setting off a pattern of ‘white flight’ that continues today in the suburbs of St. Louis.



NOTES



Chapter 24    Chapter 26

  

Copyright 2021 Stephen Werner