A time or two before, I have dealt on this program with the matter of church membership growth. It is true that such membership in the U.S. is booming, but the statistics we have as to how big the boom is are often (perhaps always) inaccurate. Compilation of church statistics is the main source of information, i.e., the Yearbook of American [& Canadian] Churches, represents nothing more than the results gained from mailing blanks to statisticians of various religious bodies, who, in turn, have to rely upon unchecked estimates of local pastors. As for the matter of church attendance, there are few if any real statistics at all. It is interesting, however, to note that while population increase for 1954 was 1.7 percent, Protestant increase was 2.3 percent as to membership, while Catholic was 2.9 percent, a slight edge in favor of the Catholics. You might be interested in knowing, also, that the figures for last year, in round numbers, were: Protestant, 570,000,000; Roman Catholic, 32,000,000; Jewish, 5,000,000; and Eastern Orthodox, 2,000,000.
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One of the things that many of us, especially teachers, are watching is the forthcoming White House Conference on Education. Back in January 1954, the president in a message to Congress requested a nationwide study be made to determine by investigation in every state of the union if the United States faced a crisis in education. Now none of us would deny the good of such a program, but for the fact that we had long known there was already such a crisis. As pointed out on this program some months ago, approximately a million dollars had been spent by the various appropriate agencies of government collecting and maintaining facts about this same crisis. Educators everywhere had pointed out the critical areas and pleaded for immediate relief. To their grave disappointment, instead of action, they got only words. For almost two years now, the preliminary work has come on. Upward of some 100,000 persons have taken part in the deliberations, and now the answers are to be given at the White House Conference? Just what will these answers be? Will they present a true picture? Will they be in the form of concrete recommendations? Will they set forth specific remedies?
Many of us who are more interested in the educational welfare of the oncoming generation have been disappointed at the delay, for we recognize that the growth of boys and girls needing educational facilities will not wait while politicians quibble over theories and formulas. Hence it is that we are waiting anxiously for what the answers will be, hoping that at last they will be more than additional conferences dealing in glittering generalities while the youth of the land continue to suffer from lack of those facilities which we are able to provide so generously.
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This month the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin hearings that could do much to inspire a rebirth of freedom. The enlightened acts of a few courageous jurists and national leaders, inspiring as they have been, can reveal only the pitfalls of certain measures and protect the rights of particular individuals. But the hearings of the subcommittee headed by Senator Hennings can expose the underlying fallacy in the security mania and its attendant witch-hunt. Just as the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee of the Senate helped establish the rights of organized labor in New Deal days, the Hennnings subcommittee conceivably can help restore the rights of all. This mania has cut across religious freedom, at times separation of church and state, has attacked the press and freedom of speech, as well as the right peaceably to assemble. Bishop Oxnam, e.g., was harassed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. So was the Jewish Culture Center of Pittsburgh when its assets were seized by a local court at the instigation of an outfit of self-appointed censors of the public mind and behavior.
Of course we have had other manias before. The Know Nothing outrages of 1800 – 1860 were directed primarily at Catholics, but also, perhaps mainly at all recent immigrants. Also, we dare not forget that the Ku Klux Klan terrorized Negroes, Jews, and Catholics.
We live today in a worldwide competition for ideas, and to assume that we must give up time-honored traditions of democracy to save that democracy does not make sense. It is hoped that the Hennings subcommittee will point that out.
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All of you are aware that hardly an issue of your daily newspaper comes out but what some mention at least is made of the poor condition of our schools. Radio programs are devoted to it, and magazines carry articles pro and con as to the quality of our schools, and what can be done to improve that quality. For example, an article in September Harper’s insists that “Public Schools Are Better Than You Think,” by Sloan Wilson. This is the pro side.
Now, just how good schools are is difficult to measure. The sociologist estimates it in terms of culture: birth rate and death rate, auto accidents, water usage and sewage disposal, police and fie protection, divorce rate, consumption of liquor and patent medicines, truancy, dependency, delinquency, crime, health, including mental health, adequacy of agencies combating social pathology, religious instruction, racism, and so on almost indefinitely. On any sociological scale many of our schools would rate rather low…. But most of us in the field assert that the school system is basic to culture and its perpetuation.
The argument that school financing may safely be left to state and local districts is not impressive when the state of the nation’s schools is examined. That is what has been done and the school systems have not done the tremendous job assigned them. With the cry for lower taxes handed out to many of the people in many of the states, the outlook for more far-sighted spending for education is not bright. Federal taxation takes from all who can afford to pay and gives it back in education to those who cannot pay. Isn’t that democratic? Is that un-American? This reporter cannot see that, properly safeguarded, federal aid to schools is any more dangerous than federal aid to agriculture. Are corn, wheat, cattle, more important than our children? In my own case there is nothing more important than children generally, and my own in particular.
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My mail contains, often, materials from many organizations; materials from some making sense; those from others seem rather far-fetched, naive, or what have you. I have one of the latter types before me now. Some of its contents are praiseworthy, if somewhat visionary at the present stage. They insist that we can produce enough food to feed all the world’s peoples; that we can provide medicine to conquer the dread diseases and ease the pain of the financial burden of common ailments (which may be true); and housing within the reach of all. Admitting that in theory all these are possible, it still remains to consider how practically it can be brought about within the next decade. But, the pamphlet goes on to laud the Summit Conference in July, describing it as “breaking the ten-year pattern of the Cold War” and ushering in “a new spirit of conciliation in international relations.” Well, within the past few days, since the foreign ministers’ conference has been meeting, we see, as of this moment, that the smiles of Geneva at the summit did not mean any essential compromise of points of view on the part of either the Russians or the West.
It lauds the Austrian peace treaty as a great demonstration of concession by the Russians, and calls it one of the main ‘deeds not words’ actions which Eisenhower called upon Russia to show some months ago. Well, the sincerity and good faith of the Austrian treaty can be determined only by time and future events. It is not too pessimistic, however, to speculate that Austria may well be the focal point of future maneuvers that may bring the whole of the country behind the Iron Curtain.
The pamphlet, as a whole, savors of either unrealism or a more subtle motive of deliberately displaying things as they are not. As I pointed out some weeks ago, the struggle between the East and West is a fundamental one: one in which both sides must make at least the minimum concessions here and there in order to permit two systems to coexist. But we would do well to read between the lines of propaganda sheets designed to lull us into believing the unreal.
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The Catholic Church apparently has established a firm foothold in the South, long a center of hostility to Catholicism. Catholic dioceses in 17 Southern and border states had a membership of 4,157,000 at the beginning of this year, a gain of more than 40 percent over 1945. The Catholic population in North Carolina has nearly tripled in 10 years. It has approximately doubled in South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida. Despite these gains, only about 20 percent of the population in the South is Catholic.
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Atlantic City: The president of the New Jersey Congress of Parents and Teachers has opposed proposals for excusing children from public schools for religious training. Mrs. A.G. Link told the group’s convention that the similarities among school children should be emphasized, rather than their differences.
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A leading Catholic organization says the nation would be better off if government officials spent less time talking about God and more time serving him. The National Council of Catholic Men said, “Many people, including senators, congressmen, and others high up” seem to have discovered that “pious expressions are good public relations.” An editorial in the organization’s publication said these gestures would be fine “if we could see more evidence that our public leaders really” carry their expressions out in practice.
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Pope Pius XII warned teachers that no education method will be successful if it spurns Christian principles. He spoke to members of an Italian education association. And from Washington comes news that Pope Pius has appointed the Most Rev. Joseph McCracken as coadjutor bishop with the right of succession to the Most Rev. Robert Armstrong, bishop of Sacramento, California. McCracken was formerly auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles.
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From Vatican City comes news that the Vatican newspaper has denounced the race segregation politics of the South African government. In a bitter editorial, it has called them “unjust and immoral.”
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Russia is still stalling on the admission of an American priest seven months after he asked permission to go to Moscow. The Rev. Louis Dion, of the Order of Assumptionists, of Worcester, Massachusetts, applied for entry last March. So far he has received no word of whether Russia will admit him.
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Services throughout the U.S. today by individual churches and in community worship will mark the 438th anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. In them, Luther argued against indulgences and for a new understanding of repentance. Other breaks with the church had been made before, and still more came later, even with the new movement. But Luther’s stand was the first to expand fast. The Lutherans have commemorated the day, October 31, 1517. Other Protestant churches have also marked it. But the interdenominational services have been a long time arriving. Some 300 communities will see united worship for this year’s Reformation Sunday. In 1950, only about 50 communities had such inter-church services. In many churches and community services today, the concluding hymn will be Luther’s famous “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”
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The 153rd Annual Massachusetts Baptist Convention has heard from the church’s national president that “The church needs to adopt a more vigorous approach to bring more men into the fold.” The statement is from Frank A. Nelson of Racine, Wisconsin, a layman. The Baptist meetings at Haverhill, Massachusetts, also have been told by him that the church has certainly been too reticent for a courageous active faith on the part of its men.
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Jewish-sponsored Brandeis University, at Waltham, Massachusetts, is breaking with a long-time U.S. collegiate tradition. It has three separate chapels on its campus for worship by Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant students. Almost every other U.S. college or university has but one chapel built for one form of worship, but usually open to all. Dedication services for the three chapels will be delivered today by Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan. The scene will be the common ground adjacent to the chapels.