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Quotes Of The Day

Robert M. Hutchins: Democracy is the best form of society. . . . The function of the citizen of a democracy is ruling and being ruled in turn for the good life of the whole. In a democracy the good man and are identical: the good citizen since in a democracy all men are rulers, all men must have the eduIcation that rulers must have. . . . The only true education is that which aims at a social ideal that can be achieved by the improvement of men.

Lewis Mumford: Man's chief puris the creation and prespose ervation of values; that is what gives meaning to our civilization, and the participation in this is what gives significance, ultimately, to the individual human life. . . . Ignazio Silone: The distinction between theories and values is not sufficiently recognized, but it is fundamental. On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one found a culture, a civilization, a new way of living together among

men.

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Aldous Huxley: The saint is one who knows that every moment of our human life is a moment of crisis; for at every moment we are called upon to make an all-important decision-to choose between the way that leads to death and spiritual darkness and the way that leads toward light and life; between interests exclusively temporal and the eternal order; between our personal will, or the will of some projection of our personality, and the will of God. Albert Schweitzer: The pathway from imperfect to perfect recognized truth leads through the valley of reality. European thought has already descended into this valley. Indian thought is still on the hill on this side of it. If it wishes to climb to the hill beyond, it must first go down into the valley.

Herbert Hoover: Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, sorrow, and the triumphs that are the aftermaths of war.

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Quotes Of The Ages

Katha-Upanished: The good is one thing, the pleasant another; these two having different objects, chain a man. It is well with him who clings to the good; he who chooses the pleasant, misses his end.

R. Smith: Most of the critical things in life, which become the starting points of human destiny, are little things.

Seneca: The wish to be cured is of itself an advance to health.

Charles E. Wheelan: Laughter is the saving emotion of the human race, when genuine, for from its presence the cynic flees, the pessimist retreats, the misanthrope is driven to cover.

Dr. Frank Crane: The soul little suspects its own courage. We have had to tear men's bodies to pieces, to burn, crush, strangle and crucify them to find that last wonderful drop of courage. Take even a common man, the commonest, and beat and bruise him enough and you will see his soul rise Godlike.

Chateaubriand: The most disastrous times have produced the greatest minds. The purest metal comes of the most ardent furnace, the most brilliant lightning comes of the darkest clouds.

Disraeli The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

Voltaire: There are men who can think no deeper than a fact.

Jean La Bruyère: There are but two ways of rising in the world: either by one's own industry or profiting by the foolishness of

others.

Aristotle: Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.

Goethe: Every return from error exerts a mighty formative effect on man, specifically and generally, so that it is easy to understand how the prober of hearts can take greater pleasure in one repentant sinner than in 99 righteous.

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Facing A Threat To

American Freedom

From a Sermon delivered at the Riverside Church, New York, N. Y.

HUMAN PERSONALITY has inherent, indefeasible rights, especially the right of direct approach to God; that every individual has infinite worth and must be regarded as an end in himself, never as a means to an end; that a man's conscience should be in the keeping neither of priest nor magistrate; that the final arbiter of his actions should be his sense of duty and responsibility to God; that freedom of soul is the supreme freedom with which earthly authority can be permitted to interfere. The growing observance of Reformation Sunday is a growing undoubtedly due to appreciation of these, the basic affirmations of Protestantism.

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There is another factor in the situation. It is the open bid for power and dominance in this country which Roman Catholicism is making. Protestants are bound to view this with alarm because of the anti-democratic character of the Romanist system. It is easy to say, that the alarm is due to bigotry, intolerance, jealousy on the part of a competing faith. are the facts? What, however,

Robert J. McCracken

With the tide running against it in Europe, its stronghold for centuries, Roman Catholicism is engaged in ceaseless, surreptitious pressure to obtain a position of preference and control in the New World. Nor can there be much doubt as to the success attending its efforts. It has an astonishing hold over the machinery of Ameri can life-the press, the radio, the films, the whole field of public relations. It is constantly bringing its weight to bear on local, state and national officials, on the political machines which rule many of our cities, on labor unions, social welfare agencies, teachers' organizations. Its clearly avowed purpose is to make America Catholic.

Already we are at the place where no political party is prepared to incur or even risk the hostility of the hierarchy. A respect is paid to its censorship which is eloquent evidence of the pressure being employed to enforce it. Fear of a Catholic boycott has become a factor alike in commercial and political life. Editors and business men as well as

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Senators and Congressmen are afraid to give offense to Catholics because back of Catholics is an authoritarian system which can make its weight felt. It is high time Protestants realized that Rome has established itself practically as an independent empire in the United States.

Take the President's 1951 nomination of an ambassador to the Vatican. Doubtless it was prompted by a variety of motives, of which one was the desire to secure closer collaboration between the United States and the Vatican in the struggle against communism. But behind it was there not also on Rome's part a bid for preferential recognition, and on the President's part a bid for the Catholic vote? On what level are we to operate in this matter? On the level of power-politics, or on the level of principle? For Protestants there is a principle at stake. It runs right back to the framing of the Constitution. The founding Fathers, familiar with the union of church and State on the Continent of Europe, familiar with the struggle for ascendancy on the part of both and with the tension and friction resulting therefrom, resolved that here the two should be separate that the official, institutional functioning of the one should not be linked with the official, institutional functioning of the other. There was to be no es

tablishment of religion in America. There was to be no political status, certainly no preferential status, accorded to any ecclesiastical body. Equal rights for every faith and discrimination against none was the democratic principle laid down by the makers of the Constitution. It is the distinctive feature of American life and the guarantee of religious liberty, which is the fundamental liberty.

The principle of the separation of church and state is a principle to which the Roman Catholic Church is absolutely opposed in theory and reluctantly conformist in practice in countries where it is without power of jurisdiction. In every country where its influence is paramount it asserts its spiritual supremacy over the state and over the rights of minority religions. The American clergy trained at the Pontifical University in Rome are taught: "Catholics must make all possible efforts to bring about the rejection of this religious indifference of the state and the instauration, as soon as possible, of the wished-for union and concord of state and church . . . Whether tolerance of non-Catholic religions is promised. under oath by a statutory law or not, it can never be admitted." (Shane Quarterly, April, 1949, pp. 92f.) That is what is taught in Rome. Here in the United States Monseignor O'Toole, professor of

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philosophy at the Catholic Uni-
versity of America, had this to
say: "No Catholic may positively
and unconditionally approve of the
policy of separation of church and
state. But given a country like
the United States, where religious
denominations abound and the
population is largely non-Catholic,
it is clear that the policy of treat-
ing all religions alike becomes, all
things considered, a practical ne-
cessity, the only way of avoiding
a deadlock. Under such circum-
stances, separation of church and
state is to be accepted, not indeed
as the ideal arrangement, but as
vivendi."
modus
Underlying

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such teaching is the unqualified dictum in the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII: "It is not lawful for the state... to hold in equal favor different kinds of religion." What Rome declares unlawful the American Constitution prescribes: the state is to hold in equal favor different kinds of religion.

It may be objected that there nevertheless is historical precedent for the President's action. From 1797 to 1848 was there not an American consulate at Rome? There was; but it transacted commercial business only and its relations were with the papal states as such and not with the Catholic church or the pope. In 1848 the consulate was raised to that of a minister resident, but the directions given to the minister were

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was

explicit. He
to cultivate
friendly civil relations with the
papal government and devote him-
self to the extension of the com-
merce between the two countries.
The arrangement did not prove a
profitable or practical one and it
made for controversy and dissen-
sion in this country. By 1868 Con-
gress stipulated that no further
appropriations should be paid for
the support of the minister in resi-
dence. At no time was the Ameri-
Rome a
representative at
delegate to the pope as head of the
Catholic church. He was specific-
ally instructed that the govern-
ment of the United States occu-
pied an entirely different posi-
tion from that of other govern
ments with diplomatic represen
tatives in Rome-a point to re-
member when it is urged that
this country should now do what
so many other countries see no
difficulty in doing. England has
an ambassador at the Vatican, but
England has an established
church.

The whole issue was revived in 1940 when President Roosevelt appointed a Protestant business man, Myron Taylor, as his personal representative to the Vatican. The appointment was never authorized by the government of the United States. It was, what the nineteenth century appointments never were, an appointment to the pope as the head of the Catholic

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