Peace : the fruit of justice YnlHlH PEACEJ THEJFRUIT [(JUSTICE RlREF.MSGR.FULTONJ.SNFFN PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE by Rt. Rev. Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic University of America Five addresses delivered in the nationwide Catholic Hour (produced by the National Council of Catholic Men, in cooperation with the National Broadcasting Company), on Sundays from January 7 to February 4, 1940. Page Whence Come Wars? 5 A Universal Norm of Morality 14 The Unity of Mankind 23 Civil Authority and Divine Law 33 The Papacy and Peace 44 National Council of Catholic Men Producers of the Catholic Hour 1312 Massachusetts Ave., N. W., Washington, D. C. Printed and distributed by Our Sunday Visitor Huntington, Indiana Imprimatur ^JOHN FRANCIS NOLL, D. D. Bishop of Fort Wayne Deacfeftfisd Dedicated to Mary Immaculate, Queen of Peace with filial love Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/peacefruitofjustOOshee WHENCE COME WARS? Address delivered on January 7, 1940. It is a joy to be back with you again, though I am sorry it comes at this time when the world is at war. But God be thanked that the air of our land can be filled with messages of peace rather than with engines of death. As we look back on the last two decades one wonders if what we called the last World War ever ended—what we called ‘Peace’ may have been only an interlude between wars, and what we labelled an ‘Armistice’ may have been just a tem- porary cessation of hostilities, a kind of lull in mass suicide. Why is it that human beings who love peace so much should be denied it? Why should those who hate war so much be marched into its bloody fields? In other words, why are there wars? This is the question we shall discuss in this initial broadcast. From God’s point of view (and this is our con- cern, rather than the political or the economic point of view) there are two reasons for wars : War may be either something to be waged in the name of God, or something to be undergone at the hands of God. War may be either a vindication of Divine Justice or a chastisement from Divine Justice. War may be either a crusade or a curse; either a token of man’s love of God, or the fruit of man’s godlessness ; either a sign that men are with God, or a token that they are against Him. Among the first kind of wars, the crusades, may be mentioned the one Michael waged in heaven as he flashed his archangelic sword against Lucifer in de- fense of the rights of God; or the wars on earth 6 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE when nations, like Michael, unfurl the banners of the Lord of Hosts amid the battle cry 'Who is like unto God’, against those who would banish His memory from the earth He has made. But there are other wars which are not for a vindication of God’s honor, but are a chastisement for man’s dishonor. St. James in his epistle suggests that this is a far more general cause of wars: “From whence are wars and contentions among you ? Are they not hence, from your concupiscences, which war in your members” (James 4:1)? It is worth noting that St. James here completely ignores the economic causes of wars and places the blame not on ideologies, but on men ; not on politics, but on concupiscence; not on trade balances, but on sin. War is first in man, then among men. The conflict on battlefields is but the extension of the conflict within man. Man revolting against God is the min- iature of the war of man revolting against his fellowman. How often we find this cause of war written across the pages of Scripture. Turn over the pages of the Old Testament. War is often pictured as a scourge upon Israel, a chastisement for their injus- tices and a judgment upon their wickedness. As the Babylonians, Egyptians, Medes, Persians, Philis- tines, and Assyrians invade Israel to devour it with an open mouth, the prophets, like James later on, blame the wars on their forgetfulness of God : “. . . my people have done two evils. They have for- saken me, the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremias 2:13). Then, as if writing for our times, when nations which boast they are defending religion seek to enter into pacts WHENCE COME WARS? 7 with anti-religious governments because their guns are many and their tanks are strong, the prophets thunder: “Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help, trusting in horses, and putting their confidence in chariots, because they are many: and in horse- men, because they are very strong: and have not trusted in the Holy One of Israel, and have not sought after the Lord . . . Egypt is man, and not God : and their horses, flesh, and not spirit : and the Lord shall put down his hand, and the helper shall fall, and he that is helped shall fall, and they shall all be confounded together” ( Isaias 31:1, 3). Nor does the New Testament indicate any change in the punitive function of war. Our Divine Lord describes a war that will come in the life time of His hearers when Titus would encompass Jeru- salem wit han army in the year 70. As if entering into the details of modern warfare He added : “And thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and com- pass thee round, and straighten thee on every side, and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee, and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone” (Luke 19: 43, 44). If there ever seemed a time when men might be rallied together in defense of a nation, it was then ; if there was ever a moment when the cry “resist the aggressor” might find response in the soul of a peo- ple, it was then ; if ever patriotism might rightfully enkindle hearts to turn back the invading armies, it seemed to be then. And yet when that moment would come, what did Our Lord tell His people to do? To take up arms? No! To flee! Flee not as be- fore into the walled cities, but “to the mountains” {Matt. 24:16). Flee into the cold mountains without a mantle: “for these are the days of vengeance” 8 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE (Luke 21 :22). Then in one masterly stroke He gives the clue to the disaster : “Thou hast not known the time of thy visitation . . . [or] the things that are to thy peace : but now they are hidden from thy eyes” (Luke 19: 44, 42). War is an evil like a disease. A disease may be due either to external causes such as the attack of a germ from the outside, or to internal causes, such as lack of rest or nourishment, or excesses in eating or drinking. It would be quite wrong to think that war is due wholly and exclusively to external causes such as the unleashing of Red and Brown barbarians bent on destroying the culture of the world. It is due to that, but it may be also of our own making. As the drunkard disturbs his equilibrium and vision by violating the law of nature, so too do nations, by vio- lating the laws of nature’s God, produce out of their own bosom that disturbance of international equilib- rium we call war. What we sow, that also do we reap. If we pluck out our eyes, we become blind; if we disobey the laws of music, we produce discord ; what a headache is to a man who violates the laws of health, that war may be to men who violate the laws of God — the self-inflicted chastisement of our sins. Abraham Lincoln looked upon the Civil War that way when he wrote : “The awful calamity of a civil war which now desolates our land may be but a punishment in- flicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to our needful reformation as a whole people . . . We have forgotten the gracious hand that preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior virtue and wisdom of our own. In- WHENCE COME WARS? 9 toxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God who made us.” Later on in his Proclamation of July 7, 1864, he added: “It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.” If wars may be generated out of the social order by injustice and forgetfulness of God, does it not behoove us to examine our national conscience? Are we really so righteous, so just, as to be immune from the self-inflicted punishment of war? First of all, do we really believe in God? Certainly the vast majority of people in America do profess a belief in God. But is that belief only a mental affirmation or does it involve an act of will and service? Do we realize that the failure to live up to the full implica- tions of any truth is the factual repudiation of that truth? Could St. Paul apply to us what he said to the Romans, that professing to believe in God, they did nothing about it, never glorified Him and never gave thanks. “Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart” (Rom. 1:24) “. . . for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice” (Rom. 1:18). Do we in America, who are so much scandalized at the godlessness of Russia and Germany, realize that 60% of the children of the United States are today growing into manhood and womanhood with- out any formal religious or moral education? Sup- pose one day this godless generation chose to live out its godlessness? Would we not then move into Russian tyranny and slavery without ever leaving our shores? How many universities in our land 10 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE founded as religious institutions for the propagation of a particular Christian creed, today adhere to the creeds they were founded to propagate? Even when we do speak of returning to God, do not too many of us say we will accept Him on our conditions, not His? Do not most of us want only a “United Front God” into whose funnel one can pour our contradictions, unethical ethics, and diluted gos- pels? Do we not want a religion loose enough to permit moral holidays—one that will let us be good a little later on, but not now? While envying those who are happy in the love of all Christ’s command- ments, do we not prefer to pick and choose among those commandments, so that we may judge our vir- tues by the vices from which we abstain ? Do we not want the Sermon on the Mount, but without the text “Take up your cross”? Do not most of us desire a God of our own making, a God who flatters our god- lessness, who smiles on our sins, who blesses our scepticism, who ignores our violation of His laws, who curses our enemies, who helps us make money, but not a God of Justice and Charity whose way to peace is the humility of the Crib and the abnegation of the Cross? Let us admit the fact: Before picking up stones to cast at the adulteresses abroad, we ought to turn the searchlight into our own consciences. How many of us who protest against the destruction of churches and synagogues abroad ever go into a church or a synagogue? What is the use of the world overthrowing a Hitler or a Stalin if it keeps the spirit that breeds them? To oppose a nation justly as the enemy of God we must believe in God; we may not smash its idols and keep our own. We cannot ignore God in our national life and expect WHENCE COME WARS? 11 Him to be with us in our international relations ; we cannot revolt against God in our consciences and ex- pect Peace in our country. I am profoundly convinced that the majority of Americans realize this truth now as they never have in the past. The effects of irreligion and the aban- donment of the Justice and Charity of God were in previous decades veneered over with a kind of humaneness which concealed their awful state. A false economic security helped also to create the illu- sion that we could be prosperous without being God- fearing. But in the last year the masks have been torn away. What we see before us now are not mere political upheavals or economic depression, but the bold stark fact of evil. We laughed at the idea of sin when we were prosperous ; but now we are humbled as the full implication of godlessness possesses one fifth of the earth’s surface. We are just waking up to the old historical truth that the loss of God is the beginning of tyranny. As the Holy Father expressed it: “Perhaps — God grant it—one may hope that this hour of direst need may bring a change of outlook and sentiment to those many, who, till now, have walked with blind faith along the path of popular modern errors un- conscious of the treacherous and insecure ground on which they trod” (Summi Pontificatus, NCWC, p.ll). To reduce the plea for a return to God to the concrete and to avert war as a chastisement and to bring down upon our land the blessings of the Al- mighty, we submit to our fellow countrymen this suggestion : A rebirth of the spirit of prayer. There was once a time in our national life when the family prayed before and after meals; when men stopped 12 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE in their fields and lifted their souls to God; when doctors before performing an operation, or lawyers before opening a case, invoked the Holy Spirit; when children knelt at their bedside morning and night to commend themselves to Him who became a Child that we might not glory in our greatness. This atmosphere of prayer must be revived in our country, not that we might get something but that we might become something; not that we might sugarcoat our living with a veneer of piety, but that we might abandon our natural selfish way of think- ing and living and put on the mind and spirit of Christ. To help my radio audience I have prepared a tiny pocket prayerbook which I will send free to anyone, Protestant, Catholic, or Jew, who writes in and asks for it: you need not even send return postage. In it you will find short morning and eve- ning prayers, prayers for special intentions such as a prayer for Peace, a prayer for Truth, prayers for our country, and spiritual thoughts suitable for meditation. I make this offer because of a profound belief that the time has come for us to deside: We will gather or we will scatter ; we will be either with God or against Him. What proves it better than this question : Why is it that every person in the United States who defends Russia’s invasion of Finland is either anti-religious or non-religious? It is because having lost God they have lost all sense of Justice, Charity, and Mercy which are rooted in Him. You cannot expect a rose to bloom in ashes. On the contrary, have you also noticed that every person who condemns the barbarities of Rus- sia either believes in God, or has a spark of religion WHENCE COME WARS? 13 in his soul? To those in particular we offer this prayerbook, that by a renewed spirit of prayer and dependence upon Almighty God, all of us—Jews, Protestants, and Catholics—may see our country turned from the catastrophe of war, and made to dwell in brotherly love under the Fatherhood of God. If you say these short prayers morning and night, meditate but a minute a day upon the Divine truths expressed therein, I will not guarantee you great prosperity or worldly influence, but I will guarantee you inner happiness, the mending of your broken hearts, the joy of a good conscience, the thrill of a life grounded in its Source, and the peace which surpasses all understanding; for if God is with you, who can be against you? A UNIVERSAL NORM OF MORALITY Address delivered on January 14, 1940. What would be your answer if someone asked this question: “What is the fundamental cause of the ills of the world at the present time?” Perhaps you will be interested in hearing the answer of the Holy Father, Pius XII: “Before all else, it is cer- tain that the radical and ultimate cause of the evils which We deplore in modern society is the denial and rejection of a universal norm of morality as well for individual and social life as for internation- al relations” (Summi Pontificatus, NCWC, p.13). By a “universal norm of morality” the Holy Father obviously means a standard of morality that has reference to human nature, that is applicable at all times and all places, not one which is grounded on particular interest. Here are three samples of particular judgments which show how far the world has departed from a morality based on conscience and on God: First, the contemporary opposition to Com- munism. America has suddenly turned against Communism. But why? Because of a universal moral judgment based on the intrinsic wickedness of Communism? Most certainly not! Rather be- cause of a particular judgment: Communism signed a treaty with someone whom most Americans hate, namely Hitler. That is not a good sound moral reas- on. It is like saying : “Murder is all right, but if the murderer ever sits down to share an ice cream soda with a thief he ought to be hanged!” Does Communism begin to be wicked only because it asso- ciates with the wicked? Do enemies of civilization A UNIVERSAL NORM OF MORALITY 15 begin to be objects of our repudiation only because they join hands with our enemies? Is the bank- robber wrong only because he gave some manganese and iron to the thief who stole my spare tire? If Communism is wrong because it joined with the Nazis, would it be right again tomorrow if it broke off with the Nazis? A universal moral judgment would condemn Communism as the enemy of civili- zation and culture even though it never saw a Nazi salute; according to such a judgment, Communism would be wrong even though there were no Nazis. As the late Holy Father, Pius XI, put it : Communism is “intrinsically wicked/’ That is why the Catholic Church opposed it from the very beginning, and would continue to oppose it even though Hitler and Stalin never signed a treaty. The second exhibit to illustrate the decline of a universal moral judgment is the hatred of the Nazis. One of the most common charges alleged against the Nazis is their persecution of religion. That sounds very good—but if persecution of religion is wrong, it is wrong wherever it is done. Why do those who condemn it as wrong in Germany not also condemn it as wrong in Mexico, in Russia, and in Spain two years ago ? Why do we pick and choose among bar- barities? Is killing in a beer hall wrong and perse- cuting in a sanctuary pardonable? Is persecution of religion in one country to be called “saving democ- racy” and in another “destroying democracy?” The fact is that the moral indignation against Nazism on the part of some is really only an emotional anger against a particular persecution waged by a par- ticular opponent. An aroused wrath against the per- sons of dictators, rather than against wrongs, proves only that too many of us hate persons more 16 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE than we love principles. We are never going to lift ourselves to moral leadership among nations unless we be clear minded enough to see that no one has a right to be heard on the subject of religious perse- cution who does not condemn it irrespective of where he finds it, and irrespective of who is perse- cuted, whether it be Jew, Protestant, or Catholic. The Catholic who condemns the persecution of the Protestants in Germany but not the persecution of the Jews, has no right to his protest any more than the Jew who condemns persecutions of his country- men in Germany, but ignores the persecution of Protestants in Germany, or Catholics in Mexico. To us all as to Seneca : Homo res sacra homini. Man is sacred in the ultimate recesses of his nature under God. God finds all men lovable and even though we find some of them hateful, we must bring ourselves to God’s point of view ; or our choosing among bar- barities will simply mean the advent of our form of barbarism. The third exhibit of a particular moral judg- ment is the breaking of treaties. Many are indig- nant at Hitler because he broke his promise to Poland, Danzig, and England; and because Stalin broke his promise to Poland and America. They argue that social order can exist only on condition that states and individuals respect their solemn treaties. This argument sounds well, but nonsense reaches no darker depths than where we hear it coming from a divorced man living with his second wife in conscious repudiation of God’s law, arguing that Hitler and Stalin ought to be shot because they broke their treaties. Is not this a particular judg- ment in which wrong is right for him, but wrong for someone else? Why is it wrong for Stalin to vio- A UNIVERSAL NORM OF MORALITY 17 late his treaty with Poland and right for a man to break his solemn promise of fidelity to his spouse until death do them part? Why is it vicious for Hitler to find excuses for getting out of his pacts and virtuous for the divorced man to do exactly the same thing? Do we in America realize that out of every five marriages, one ends in divorce and remarriage? Hitler and Stalin are doing what twenty per cent of our citizens are doing—breaking their treaties. Can we not see that just as a renunciation of that mar- riage bond means the breakup of the family, so the renunciation of international treaties means the breakup of nations? Shall the man who breaks up another home be less blameworthy than he who breaks up another nation? And if we, who claim to believe in God, look upon our vows before Him as scraps of paper, shall those who deny God be held to a more binding morality? Shall we be called the defenders of God when we allow God's law that what He has joined together let no man put asunder, to be violated ? Shall pledges made at Geneva be held unbreakable and those made before God breakable? Shall non-aggression pacts alone be sacred in the world and marriage pacts unholy? The point is not that these nations have a right to be unfaithful to their treaties because we are unfaithful to ours, but that neither of us has the right. We must not expect our world to be faithless to God and faithful to men ; nor can we wreck fidelity in the bond of man and woman and expect fidelity in the bond of man and man. It is just like expecting a uniform to be saluted when it no longer contains a soldier. We might just as wel admit it: If divorces are right, then broken treaties are right. If it is a 18 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE good thing for the marriage tie to be broken, let us not say that it is bad for international treaties to be broken. In the past, though men did wrong, they admit- ted there was such a thing as wrong; and therefore they needed to do penance and return to God. “They had then an effective moral sense of the just and of the unjust, of the lawful and of the unlawful, which, by restraining outbreaks of passion, left the way open to an honorable settlement” (Summi Pontifi- catus, NCWC, p.15). But today, men refuse to admit there is anything wrong. Whom do you ever hear today doing penance for his economic injus- tices or his immorality or his selfishness? The only wrong our modern world admits is social. The sin- ner today is called the patient or the socially unfit. If a little boy loses his temper and insults his father, he is not told that he is at fault; our progressive educators would not warp his mind by speaking of wrong—they blame it on his naughty ductless glands. Today nobody is wrong ; they are anti-social or have bad tonsils. This makes moral regeneration well nigh impossible; men are blind and no longer want to see, deaf and no longer want to hear. There- in is the difference from the past. As the Holy Father puts it: “In our days . . . dissensions come not only from the surge of rebellious passion, but also from a deep spiritual crisis which has over- thrown the sound principles of private and public morality” (Summi Pontificatus, NCWC, p.15). But how restore a universal norm of morality? By a return to conscience ! Here are the basic teach- ings of the Catholic Church on the problem: The foundation of a universal moral judgment is con- science which is a reflection of God’s Eternal Reason A UNIVERSAL NORM OF MORALITY 19 and Holy Will ordaining us to preserve order in His universe and through it to come to self-perfection in Him which is happiness. Good and evil thus be- come judged not in terms of my interest or my pleasure, or those of our race, our class, or our nation, but in terms of the purpose for which we all were made, namely God. It may be objected: Does not conscience err? Undoubtedly it does because we bring to its judg- ment all the bias of our emotions, interests, pleas- ures, and pains. Furthermore, my conscience can be dulled by repeated infractions of God's laws. The first week one works in a boiler factory, the noise is deafening, but after six months one be- comes accustomed to it. So the warnings of con- science can be so often ignored that we reach a point when our judgments are based on what we will for the moment, not what we ought to do for our higher good and the good of our neighbor. Furthermore, I may know what is right and still not do it; I may not know what is right, nor have the strength to do it. To meet these difficulties inherent in conscience as a universal norm of morality, that is, the inade- quacy of my own reason to tell me what is right in all circumstances, and the weakness of my nature to do the right amid difficulties, scorn, and opposition ; and likewise to meet the problem of restoring myself to the moral order, to God's favor, when I have vio- lated His Laws, the son of God came down to earth to give us His Truth, His Life, and His Forgive- ness. He did not just tell us what is true. His Person is the Truth: "I am . . . the truth" (John 14:6). Because the truth is personal, it is lovable. 20 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE He did not promise merely to assist us in this world. His Person is Our Life : “I am the Life of the World” {John 6 :33). He did not tell us to ask God to forgive sins. He forgave them because He is God : “Thy sins are forgiven thee” {Matt. 9:2). In this point all Christians who have not lost belief in the Divine are agreed, that the Person of Christ is the perfection of the Law of Conscience. But here is where the Catholic penetrates the deeper mystery of Christ, which he believes others miss. The Catholic, while asserting that Christ brought the Truth of God, the Life of God, and the Forgive- ness of God to our weak, weary consciences, can not forget that Our Lord communicated that Truth and that Life and that Forgiveness to men “even to the consummation of the world” {Matt. 28:20). His Truth He communicated by sending “the Spirit of truth [who] will teach you all truth” {John 16:13) with the guarantee that error or “the gates of hell” would not prevail against His Church (Matt. 16:18). His Life He communicated: “This is my body . . . this is my blood.” “Do this for a commemoration of me” {Matt. 26:26-28 and Luke 22:19-20). His Forgiveness He communicated: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them ; and whose sins you shall re- tain, they are retained” {John 20:22-23). Now as a reasonable being, I want to know where that Truth is today? Where is His Divine Life? Where is His forgiveness! He gave it. Who has it? Was that Divine Truth, the guide of my con- science, spoken to a Galilean breeze and wafted away A UNIVERSAL NORM OF MORALITY 21 never to be received again by man? If it is not avail- able for me today then it was not worth bringing to this earth, and certainly not worth dying for. If it is for all men, it must be available for all time. There is only one thing that would ever make me doubt the Divinity of Christ and that is He should give no guarantees to preserve for all generations the unspotted Truth He thought so precious that He died rather than surrender one jot or tittle of it. He never wrote His Divine Truth. He never told any- one to write it down. But He did say He would send it on Pentecost and He did. Where is it now, for me, in this day and hour when ten thousand false prophets would lead me like blind leaders of the blind? And His Life, the extra strength to do what is right, where is it now? If He made the child to live by its mother, did He not make me to live by His Life? Where is that Bread which is His Body and that life which is His Blood? Has He no power to communicate to me His Life as He gave it to His Apostles? If He cannot project His Life through the centuries, then how does He differ from Caesar or Napoleon or Lincoln? Shall He who rose from the dead in the newness of Life not be the life of my soul at this hour as my soul is the life of my body? If I thought that Christianity was but the memory of someone who lived 1900 years ago and left us only the remnant of his teachings set down forty years after his death, then I should give it up and seek for another Christ who would keep His prom- ises and be in truth my life and my all. And His Forgiveness, where is it now? He gives it, and rightly so, for in the 20th century we have as much and maybe more need for absolution 22 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE than in His day. Shall I who by Divine Providence am detached 1900 years from His physical presence be denied this forgiveness of sins which He gave to broken hearts of His day? I need forgiveness as did Magdalene and the penitent thief. And I want it particularly because He passed on that power of forgiveness. Who has it? Who claims it? Lead me to that truth, as the keeper of my conscience, to that life as its inner strength, to that forgiveness as its restorer to the favor of God. But there is not a single person listening to me who does not earnestly seek that universal norm of morality which tells us what is right, not when the world is right, but when the world is wrong; which gives us the Divine Bread of Life when we know what is right, and have not the strength to do it; and which forgives us our sins when knowing what is right we did what was wrong. Where that Truth, that Life, and that Forgive- ness are, I shall not tell you, because I do not want you to take my word for it. But I will tell you how to find it. Get down on your knees every day and ask God to lead you to the knowledge of the fulness of His Truth and to give you the strength to follow that Truth when you see it. God will do the rest. Just try it! THE UNITY OF MANKIND Address delivered on January 21, 1940. One of the greatest paradoxes of our times is tnat as mankind is drawn closer and closer mechan- ically, it has grown further and further apart spirit- ually. Radio, telephone, telegraph, the aeroplane, have pulled men together spatially, but at a moment when men have lost all common ideals and purposes. The explanation is simple : We have lost the unify- ing bond of the spiritual. A scientist can bring to- gether in his laboratory every chemical constitutent of the human body, but he cannot make a man. What these chemicals are without a soul, that our civiliza- tion is without God. The wildest fallacy of our gen- eration lies in the attempt to create a brotherhood of man without the Fatherhood of God. There are two difficulties often urged in war- time against the unity of man. The first is directed against unity under the Fatherhood of God ; that is, “If God is all-Powerful why does He not stop the war?” As H. G. Wells has phrased it: “If I thought there was an omnipotent God who looked down on battles and deaths and all the waste and horror of this war—able to prevent these things—doing this to amuse himself, I would spit in his empty face.” Could God stop this war? Could He prevent a Hitler or a Stalin from choosing a politics of power rather than a politics of justice? Could He force peace upon all the nations tomorrow? Most certain- ly, but only on one condition—by destroying human freedom. What Wells is asking is that God create man free to choose, yet incapable of choosing wrong. This is equivalent to asking that God make man free 24 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE and slave at the same time, which is sheer irration- ality and therefore contrary to the nature of God, which is Reasonable and True. Furthermore, this question assumes that wars are of God’s making and not man’s. On the con- trary, a war is often the result of sin, which is the abuse of freedom. The only times some men, like Wells, ever think of God is when they want to find someone to blame for their own sins. Without ever saying so, they assume that man is responsible for everything good and beautiful in the world, but God is responsible for its wickedness and its wars. God to them is like their dentist; they think of him only when they have a toothache—with this difference: they blame God for the toothache. They ignore the fact that God is like a playwright who wrote a beau- tiful drama, and gave it to men to act with all the directions for acting; and they made a botch of it. Do we not see that it is only in a world of freedom that we can be patriots and martyrs? that a man can be a hero on a battlefield only where it is pos- sible to be a coward ? and a man can be a saint only in a Church where it is possible for him to be a devil? Shall we boast of our power to make bombs, and then “spit in God’s face” because they explode? Shall we forget the goodness of God who gave us the blessing of freedom and curse Him because we mis- use it? Shall man be praised for his sacrifices and God be cursed for making sacrifice possible through freedom? Shall we drink the poison and then blame God because it takes effect? There is the answer to the question, Why does not God stop war? Because He could do so only at the cost of destroying freedom. He allows Wells to blaspheme that the rest of us might not be denied THE UNITY OF MANKIND 25 the privilege of love, sacrifice, and heroism. Fur- thermore, God did not start this war. Man did. Let man finish it therefore by restoring himself to the Justice and Charity of God. “Hate evil, and love good, and establish judgment in the gate” (Amos 5:15) for God wills not the death of the server but “that he should be converted to his ways and live” ( Ezechiel 18:23). We now pass to the other objection which is rather flippant in character. It runs like this : “The Germans pray to God for victory, so do the English and the French. On whose side is God?” This is al- ways presumed to be the last and final argument against prayer and against God. But there are two false assumptions in it. First, it assumes that God's interests are national and not spiritual, that He must take the same sides that man takes; that Di- vine Justice decides issues on the basis of geog- raphy and not morality; and that God judges men by their group actions rather than by their personal actions. Second, it assumes that all the evil is on one side and all the good on the other. Therefore God must be on one side or the other. An example will assist us in understanding the problem. Suppose a man purposely drinks a glass of water containing poisonous germs. His hands, his lips, and his stomach have cooperated in that evil act. Immediately his whole organism become dis- turbed. His heart did nothing, but it is weakened; his legs did nothing, but they falter; and his lungs did nothing but they breathe with difficulty. There is a war going on inside his system between the healthy blood cells and the poisoned cells. A doctor is called in. On whose side is the doc- 26 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE tor? Does he say: “Since the heart and lungs and legs were innocent of this crime, and the hands and lips and stomach were guilty, I shall amputate the hand, cauterize the lips, and purge the stomach?” Or, seeing that the healthy and the poisoned cells are mingled in all the organs of the body, does he not rather say : “I will be on the side of the healthy cells in the arm as well as the heart; in the lips as well as the lungs ; and in the stomach as well as the legs.” Apply this to a war. A nation possessed of wicked leadership declares war against another na- tion. The good suffer with the wicked, for society is like a body, one and organic. Some in both nations pray to God. On whose side is God? God is on the side of neither nation, any more than the doc- tor is on the side of any one organ. He is with the just on both sides and against the evil on both sides, with everlasting victory to the just and eternal death to the wicked. God judges men not by their nations but by their justice; not by their flags but by their hearts; not by the volume of their pleas, but by the right- eousness of their prayers. Granted an overwhelming majority on one side who are God-fearing men, praying for the preservation of Christian culture and civilization, then God is more on their side than on the other ; but, let it be repeated, not for national but for spiritual reasons. God is with the just Rus- sians who serve Him despite Stalin's mad persecu- tion, but He is not with unjust Russia. God is with the just Germans crushed under Hitler's boundless ambitions, but not with pagan Germany. God is with the just English and French who seek to serve, know, and love God, according to the light of their THE UNITY OF MANKIND 27 consciences, but He is not with those who would oppose Hitler and Stalin for selfish reasons. “God is not a respecter of persons. But in every na- tion, he that feareth him, and worketh justice, is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35). “The eyes of the Lord are upon the just: and his ears unto their prayers. But the countenance of the Lord is against them that do evil things : to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth” (Psalms 33:16-17). It is well for us Christians to keep in mind that there is but one war, whatever be the form it takes on the stage of history: “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirit of wickedness in the high places” (Ephesians 6:12). From this point of view all who are engaged in war, whether they be the Russian soldiers or the helpless Finns, the French or the Germans, are not enemies but fellow victims in varying degrees of a common sin. In time there are many battles, but in the order of eternity there is only one battle. The good Jews, good Pro- testants, and good Catholics in Russia, and Ger- many, England and France, are not enemies in the eternal battle. From the Divine point of view—and no other point of view matters—the just on both sides are fellow-travelers in the journey from time to the Father’s heavenly mansion, sharing in the sufferings caused by the sins of the world, until the Judgment, when their destiny will be decided not by the national anthem they sing, but by fidelity to conscience and the God who made them. Unity among men must be reestablished, not on the basis of class or race, which divides us, but on the basis of religion. This unity is to be achieved 28 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE not by watering the truths of religion down to an emotionalized secularism or sentimental humanism. Rather it is to be sought both inside religion and outside it. Inside religion there is unity because the common element in religion is a love and service of God according to the light of conscience; outside there is unity because of a common enemy—the forces of atheistic barbarism bent on destroying cul- ture and freedom. When two men are fighting in a forest, and they are attacked by a wild beast, they quickly become a unified force against a common danger. So it should be today with Jews, Protes- tants, and Catholics. There is a common enemy. Therefore let there be a common front against a common affront. This double foundation of religious unity is sound Catholic teaching. The late Holy Father, Pius XI, speaking of the internal and external principles of unity wrote: “ ... in this battle joined by the powers of darkness against the very idea of Divin- ity, it is our fond hope that, besides the host which glories in the name of Christ, all those—and they comprise the overwhelming majority of mankind — who still believe in God and pay Him homage may take a decisive part” (Divini Redemptoris, NCWC, p.48). “ . . . let all those also loyally and heartily concur, who still believe in God and adore Him, in order to ward off from mankind the great danger that threatens all alike” ( Cavitate Christi, NCWC, p.ll). That is why in these broadcasts I am appeal- ing to Jews, Protestants, and Catholics. And the present Vicar of Christ, the Holy Father Pius XII, speaking of the good will of non- Catholics, writes: “We wish to express our grati- tude to them all. We entrust them one and all to the THE UNITY OF MANKIND 29 protection and to the guidance of the Lord and we assure them solemnly that one thought only fills our mind ; to imitate the example of the Good Shepherd in order to bring true happiness to all men: ‘that they may have life, and may have it more abundant- ly’ ” (Summi Pontificatus, NCWC, p.8). To make this unity of believers in God effect- ive, it will not suffice to consider religion exclusively as a communion of the soul with God, as if all the acts of religion were personal acts. Man is not only an individual; he is also a member of society. His love of God is inseparable from his love of neighbor. “If any man say, I love God, and hateth bis brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God whom he seeth not. And this commandment we have from God, that he, who loveth God, love also his brother” ( I John 4:20-21). Since religion means loving God and our neigh- bor, it follows that we must adore God with our neighbor. For that reason I plead with all my hear- ers to begin corporate acts of religion. I plead with every Jew who is living up to the truth as he pre- sently sees it to go to his synagogue with his Jewish brother and pray to the God of Isaac, the God of Abraham, and the God of Jacob. I plead with every Protestant who is in good faith following the light as he sees it, to go to his church on Sunday and adore God with his Protestant brother, rendering praise to the Christ who made him Christian and brought plentiful Redemption. I plead also with every Catholic to attend the renewal of Christ’s sac- rifice on Calvary in the Mass, not only every Sun- day, but if possible every day, to intensify that unity that comes to all who share a common life because 30 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE they share One Truth, One Lord, One Sacrifice, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. In the Catholic Church we emphasize very strongly the social side of religion. Nothing illus- trates this better than the role the priest plays in the forgiveness of sins. We are often asked: Why not go to God directly to have your sins forgiven? Why use an intermediary, a priest? For two reas- ons. First, because Our Divine Lord communicated that Power to His Church ; as He who is God forgave sins thrpugh the instrumentality of His human na- ture, it was only fitting that He continue to do so through the instrumentality of other human natures whom He redeemed and associated to His Power. Secondly, and this is much more to the point, because sin is not only a rupture with God, but also with our fellowman. Stealing is a sin, not only because I commit an offense against the Justice of God, but also because I disorder and disturb just relations with my fellowman. Not only should I ask, then, that God forgive me my sins, but since I have rup- tured my fellowship with the spiritual community to which I belong, it is fitting that a spiritual rep- resentative of that community, namely, the priest, restore me to its unity and its brotherhood. Did not Our Lord imply as much when He said that before leaving our gift at the altar we should first make peace with our brother? Sin then, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, is not only the denial of the Fatherhood of God, it is also the destruction of the brotherhood of man. That is why both God and man share in the forgiveness of sins, or better, why God forgives sin through man. To return to the point: Our religion must not only be personal ; it must also be social. That is why THE UNITY OF MANKIND 31 we Americans must go to Church. Remember we do not save ourselves alone, in isolation from others, either politically, economically, or religiously. When the enemy of our homes and institutions attacks we must organize into an army and navy; when the enemy of our souls attacks we must organize into a religious community. Face to face with a world which organizes itself under standards which chil- dren of God are bound to repudiate, is it not the business of those children to join themselves to- gether to meet that community of hate by a com- munity of love? If we refuse to seek that unity in God, we will find, as Germany and Russia did, that in excluding God, the only unity left is the enforecd unity of the army. This is incidentally why the so- cial affirmation of our common fellowship with God is the greatest bulwark of true democracy. When the Romans abandoned praying in their temples to flock into the baths, their civilaztion decayed. And when we accept the substitute of the movie theatres for the churches and synagogues, we have already written our own epitaph. It remains only for the next generation to erect it. We have all turned from God—all nations : Russia and Germany and Mexico turned through persecution ; America, England, France, and others, through indifference. Let us beware. History proves that indifference leads to persecution. Pilate who was indifferent to truth ended by crucifying It on the Cross. Let all of us then—Jews, Protestants, and Cath- olics—intensify our love and adoration of God to the fulness of our knowledge and our strength. Then shall we develop true neighborliness which will undo hate : the hatred of anti-Semitism, atheism, bigotry, and anti-Christianity. A good beginning is to re- 32 PEACE THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE store communal worship, for if we bend our knees together to God as humble creatures we might stop asking that foolish question, “On whose side is God?”, and begin asking, “On whose side are we?” Five minutes meditation on that question would remake your life. On whose side are you? Did you go to Mass today ? Did you go to church today? Did you go to the synagogue yesterday or today ? If not, then you are not cn His side. You’d better do some- thing about it ! That prayerbook will help ! God love you! CIVIL AUTHORITY AND DIVINE LAW Address delivered on January 28, 1940. Today we shall comment on the three reasons given by the Holy Father for the drift to chaos, namely, in his words : “the divorce [of] civil author- ity from every kind of dependence upon the Su- preme Being.” The separation of Church and State is one thing; the separation of religion and politics is quite a different thing. I know not how the Chris- tian sects in America feel about the separation of Church and State in this country, but I do know how American Catholics feel about it. In the words of the late Cardinal Gibbons : “American Catholics re- joice in our separation of Church and State; and I can conceive of no combination of circumstances likely to arise, which should make a union desirable -either for Church or State”.* But because we Catholics are well content with ) he separation of Church and State in this country, it does not follow that we want religion excluded from politics, and neither does anyone else who is inter- ested in religion or politics ; for politics without re- ligion is power-politics—Hitlerism or Stalinism — and a religion which exercises no influence on the morality of politicians is hokum. It is our aim in this broadcast to suggest that religion and politics must be brought into closer re- lationship if democracy is to be saved. We have too long assumed in America that religion is concerned only with the individual while politics is concerned * A Retrospect of Fifty Years, p.234. 34 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE with society. A double disaster followed : While re- ligion was limiting itself to individuals, irreligion pre-empted the social order, just as disease would rapidly sweep America if we left the problem of health to individuals and the State did nothing about it. Secondly, a two-code standard of morality evolved, one for individuals, the other for business and politics. The man who would not cheat his cook in the privacy of his home, had another morality in business and was the same man who would under- pay his employee in the openness of his shop. Religion is not to be divorced from public rela- tions, either political or economic, for political and economic actions are human actions, and human actions are moral actions. For that reason the wisest of all pagan writers and the wisest of all Christian thinkers, Aristotle and St. Thomas, housed their treatises of Laws and Politics within the larger library of Ethics. This is as it should be for political actions and religious actions are subject to the same Eternal Law of God. There is not one law for a politician and another for a saint: Herod the poli- tician will be judged by the same God who will judge the widow who dropped her mite into the Temple treasury. There is “One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all” (Ephe- sians 4:6). This does not mean that politics and religion move on identical planes any more than the body and the soul have the same function. Politics exist to lead free men to a prosperous and virtuous common life on this earth ; religion exists to save men’s souls. But from both of them are born the two greatest loyalties known to man: the cross and the flag. “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are CIVIL AUTHORITY AND DIVINE LAW 35 Caesar’s; and to God, the things that are God’s” {Matt. 22:21). Since religion and politics are related, it fol- lows that religion and democracy are also related. Democracy does not and cannot stand on its own feet, as if it were an absolute. There are certain presuppositions of democracy which are so ground- ed in religion that if you undermine religion, you de- stroy democracy. For that reason in this broadcast I should like to appeal to Jews, Protestants, and Catholics to defend these presuppositions, which are two : Democracy owes its origin, and it owes its per- petuity, to religion. When we say that democracy owes its origin to religion we understand the principle of democracy, and not the method of democracy. There is a very fundamental distinction between the two. The prin- ciple of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift of God, the Source of Law. The method of democracy, on the contrary, is the particular way in which these rights and liber- ties are socially ordered. The principle of democracy comes from God, but the method of democracy comes from man. The principle of democracy is not new, though many of its methods are. It is well for us in America to recall this basic distinction be- tween the principle and the method of democracy for too many of us believe that the principle of de- mocracy began with the foundation of America, and that if America ever ceased to exist, democracy would pass out of the world. It would be well to recall that the Church was preaching the dignity of man over 1700 years before our government came into being. It is also quite wrong for us to judge other nations in terms of their method of gov- 36 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE ernment, or to assume that our particular method of democracy alone guarantees and preserves human rights and that if other countries are not patterned after our method of government they are tyrannical. This is untrue. Human rights can be recognized and guaranteed under a monarchy, and they could con- ceivably be extinguished under certain methods of democracy, where the majority is made equivalent to what is right. It is as a principle that democracy owes it origin to religion, which teaches that man was en- dowed with inalienable rights and liberties anterior to any State, because given to him by God. Where, for example, do we get the right to life, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, the right to own property, or the right to organize. From the will of the majority? Then the will of the majority could take them away from the minority. From Parlia- ment? Then Parliament could take them away. From the Federal government? Then the Federal government could take them away. Our founding fathers knew this, so they sought about for some basic ground of human rights and liberties which would make man independent of the State or the Dictator or a Parliament or the will of a majority, and they found that basic ground and set it down at the very beginning of the Declaration of Independ- ence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of hap- piness.” In other words, the principle of democracy, the value of the human person, owes its origin to God. Even more it owes it to Christ, the Son of God who % CIVIL AUTHORITY AND DIVINE LAW 37 preached to us the worth of a single man, against whom He balanced the entire material universe in His question: “What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul” (Mark 8:36)? He died preaching that doctrine, when turning His Head on the Cross to a thief, He addressed him in the second person singular: “This day thou shalt be with me in paradise” (Luke 23: 43). It is always man that matters. It was for man that the world was made ; it is for man that govern- ments exist. It seems therefore rather providential that Christ’s Church should always be the minority in the world; the sheep among wolves; the group whom the world would hate; the one hundred and twenty in the city of Jerusalem; the leaven in the mass; the pearl in the field. Made a, minority, the Church could best be custodian of minority rights, the defender of the weak against the strong, and thus be the salt for the preservation of the prin- ciples of democracy. No stronger proof that the democratic principle of human dignity is dependent on religion can be offered than the observation that in those countries where God is most defeated man is most tyrannized; where religion is most perse- cuted, men are most tormented. Slavery passed out of the world thanks to the leaven of Christianity, and slavery has returned to our modern world in proportion to the abandonment of religion. The eco- nomic slavery of 19th century Capitalism began when man lost a belief in hell and Divine Judgment; and the Nazi and Communist slavery of the 20th century returned with the “purging” of religion. The gravest danger to American democracy then is not from the outside; it is from the inside—the hearts of citizens in whom the light of faith has 38 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE gone out. Keep the God who is the origin of author- ity and you keep the ethical character of authority; reject it and the authority becomes power subject to no law except its own. Democracy owes its perpetuity to religion, for the reason that religion alone can teach the true nature of man. Democracies sometimes are like ships in the sense that they acquire barnacles. One of these barnacles which attached itself to our method of democracy is the doctrine that man is naturally and infinitely perfectible, and thanks to the blind laws of evolution destined to be ever progressive, to develop into increasingly braver and newer worlds. This notion of the natural perfectibility of man is not the essence of democracy ; it is a theory, and a very false theory at that. The fact is, man is not naturally and indefinitely perfectible; left to him- self man is capable of being a fool. This in simple language comes close to what we mean by the doc- trine of original sin. Religion teaches that democracy instead of being perfectible by the laws of evolution is perfect- ible by the sacrifices of its citizens. Not blind, cos- mic necessity, but growth in freedom and a sense of right and duty makes democracy better. Democracy need not be better in 1950 than it is in 1940—it may conceivably be worse. If it is better it will be for moral reasons, not for physical reasons. This false notion of necessary progress assumes that men are like acorns: The mere fact that they are planted means they become great oaks. This is to forget that while an acorn cannot frustrate itself and be- come a beech or an elm, man can, by the perversion of his will, become even inhuman. Applying this to CIVIL AUTHORITY AND DIVINE LAW 39 government, the perpetuation of democracy, religion reminds us, is not automatic, but voluntary; it is moral men which make it work, not laws of nature. Monarchies discovered this too late, as they were challenged by republics on the basis of neglect; de- mocracies will learn it too late also if they rely on social laws rather than moral effort and discipline to right the wrongs which are the sad and tragic aftermath of sin. The sooner we rid democracy of that barnacle inherited from Rousseau that man becomes better by living, the sooner we will establish an order in which criticism of government will be inseparable from sacrifice. We have not established democracy in America; we are only in the process of establish- ing it. It is not something that is got by cosmic necessity, like the spurting of an oil well, whose riches we can sit by and contemplate; it is to be won daily, as man wins freedom through the pursuit of truth and goodness. Not even the Declaration of Independence is a completed document; it is in the process of being written through a constantly re- newed and awakened sense of moral obligation. The Declaration of Independence is no more a finished thing than birth; it is an original endownment like life, which is progressive through moral effort and obedience to law. It is perhaps true to say that the perfection of democracy depends not upon the ful- fillment of one, but three Declarations of Independ- ence: First, the political Declaration of Independ- ence effected by Lincoln, which made all men free and equal before the law; second, the economic Declaration of Independence which is awaiting its fulfillment, namely, the lifting of men above the state of proletarians to that of free men, whereby 40 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE they will be made responsible sharers in an indus- trial democracy as they are now responsible voters in a political democracy ; third, the spiritual Declara- tion of Independence whereby man, emancipated politically and economically, will be free to save his soul and enjoy the glorious liberty of the children of God—for the tragedy of a poor man is not that he cannot be a full animal, but that he cannot be a free man, on earth as it is in heaven. When any civilization begins to decline it blames the cracks in its walls to forces outside itself. Pagan Rome blamed the barbarian hordes from the North, but it was only an excuse. It had already rotted inside. Modern educators blame environment and heredity for immorality and crime of the young, ignoring completely the element of will which is the root of the evil. So too in America, many think that the danger to democracy is from Europe or from across the Pacific. It is not. The gravest threat to our nation is within our nation; namely, the loss of standards of morality, the mass defection from God as the source of law and authority, and the want of formal moral training of our young. Democracy is impossible in a chaos. If the laws of health were ignored to the same extent as the laws of God are ignored, 60% of our citizens today would be bed- ridden. We may not presently see the consequences of the silly belief that social necessity and not moral living creates democracy, but it will tell in the end. It takes some time for a branch cut from a tree to die—but it dies. Shall our democracy so lose a standard of right and wrong rooted in conscience as to substitute for it the false notion that majority makes right? Then shall our democracy become an arithmocracy, and CIVIL AUTHORITY AND DIVINE LAW 41 the principles of morality give way to principles of arithmetic. Then any organized pressure group that can compel a majority against what is morally right, can overthrow the inherent rights of morality. In- cidentally, that is why Hitler and Stalin have pleb- iscites. If numbers make a thing right, then force a majority and you create the illusion that your authority is legitimate. Shall the only time that America will give concrete recognition to religion be when it builds chapels in prisons, when men have already been corrupted by the loss of that which in the beginning would have saved them? Shall we rightly spend millions in defense against enemies landing on our shores, and ignore the break-up of the family through divorce and the wreckage of in- dustrial peace through immoral selfishness and avarice? Shall we write on our coins, “In God we trust ,, ) and spend them without ever thinking of God, or become so lustful for coins that we trust more in them than in God? Shall we rightly open our law-making congresses by invoking the bless- ing of God, and then be indifferent as to whether our representatives ever bend a knee to God? Shall we pull out our educational hair because a child is never taught the sex of life of a frog, but be com- pletely unruffled if the child is never taught that sex is in the domain of ethics? What are we going to do about it? I mean you Jews, you Protestants, and you Catholics who love America deeply because you love the God who is the foundation of rights and the ground of national con- science. You will probably agree with me that there are three things we must do as a minimum. First, we must insist on religious education of our young by sending them to the Schules in case of 42 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE Jews, or to Sunday schools and parochial schools in the case of both Protestants and Catholics ; for it is sometimes forgotten that the Protestants have in this country 1795 religious schools and we Catholics have 10,044 religious schools. Second, we must choose as public officials only those citizens—whether they be Jews, Protestants, or Catholics—who have learned to serve men honest- ly, by serving God in their consciences. Third, we must re-enkindle in ourselves a spirit of prayer. God is not with the strong but with the just. And this prayer, as I suggested last Sunday, must be corporate. The Jew in his synagogue and the Protestant in his Church, according to the light of their consciences, and the Catholic at his renewed sacrifice of Calvary in the Mass. How can we infuse morality into politics if we consider religion as an individual affair? If the laborer considered his economic condition as a purely individual affair, there would have been no economic betterment of the laborer. Leaving relig- ion out of our national life is not like leaving raisins out of a cake, but like leaving an eye out of the body. It is not a negation, but a privation. If our democracy is to succeed, it will do so only through an increased recognition of duty and self- discipline. We are too much concerned with our rights and not with our duties. We talk about get- ting our rights from God, but forget that they imply duties to God. Our democracy will survive only as long as we keep our God. When we abandon Him, democracy abandons us. We ought therefore, all of us, Jews, Protestants, and Catholics, get down on our knees every day and thank God for the bless- ings of America. For that reason, in the prayerbook CIVIL AUTHORITY AND DIVINE LAW 43 referred to previously, I have included a prayer for our country. Not even those who want to build a Godless slavery in America are will- ing to leave America for Russia. They would rather undermine our liberties than live under the tyranny they have created by the destruction of those liberties. Believe me, it is no small joy for us Americans to be saved from the immoral politics of a Germany and a Russia/ for, unlike their har- ried peoples, when we hear a loud knocking at the door early in the morning, we can be sure it is only the milkman. 44 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE THE PAPACY AND PEACE Address delivered on February 4, 1940. In order to avoid any misunderstanding, the subject of this broadcast is “The Papacy and Peace”, not the Papacy and America. Its burden is simply an investigation of the available instruments and agencies for restoring peace to the world. We will start with this fact : No nation today lives in isola- tion from any other nation. We are as organic as the universe. If you throw a stone into the sea, it causes a ripple which widens in ever greater circles until it affects even the most distant shore. In like manner, no war between States is purely national; every war today is international in the sense that every nation is affected by it. Granted then the international repercussion of war, where must we look for an agency of peace to end our present barbarism? To the League of Na- tions which was set up after the first World War? Most certainly not! Admitting that it did mobilize humanitarian sentiments, it is inadequate to give world peace for two reasons : First, it was born in the days of vengenace of 1918 while the flames of hate still burned high, and therefore imposed peace on the vanquished without their collaboration. To the victors it became not only the instrument for preserving a settlement arrived at by military vic- tory, but also the future instrument for applying sanctions against any State which by force of arms would change the status quo of settlement. “ . . . the heart of the victor all too easily is hardened; moderation and far-seeing wisdom appear to him weakness; the excited passions of the people, often THE PAPACY AND PEACE 45 inflamed by the sacrifices and sufferings they have borne, obscure the vision even of responsible per- sons and make them inattentive to the warning voice of humanity and equity, which is overwhelmed or drowned in the inhuman cry ‘Vae metis , woe to the conquered.’ There is danger lest settlements and decisions born in such conditions be nothing else than injustice under the cloak of justice” (Summi Pontificatus, NCWC, pp. 31-3). Second, in its settlements the League of Nations so much emphasized national independence and sov- ereignty, that it forgot to give itself any participa- tion of sovereignty on an international plane. It was like a father who, in a desire to make each of his children financially independent, gave them shares of his fortune, and then found he had noth- ing left for himself and thereby lost his authority over his children. The League of Nations was sup- posed to be, as the word implies, a unity of nations, but it had nothing out of which to create a unity. In order to bind anything together, you must be out- side of it. You cannot tie up a bundle if you go into the bundle; you cannot pack your valise if you go into the valise; so neither can you tie nations into a league if you are one of the nations. If you do, the league will mean only obeying someone else’s poli- ticians; and heaven knows, if we will not obey our own politicians, we will not obey someone else’s. The bond of unity among nations cannot be nation- al ; it must be extra-national in the sense that it is supra-national. In other words, such a league must recognize a standard outside and beyond its decis- ions, by which even it is bound. Otherwise its de- cisions will be only settlement by consent, not by justice. Then a great nation’s interests in oil wells 46 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE will be the basis of settlement, rather than the jus- tice rooted in responsibility to God. If there is no law outside of the law of the League of Nations then its decisions are “abandon- ed to the fatal drive of private interest and collective selfishness.” A ship must cast its anchor outside itself ; the measuring rule cannot be the thing which is measured; judges must not be financially involved with those whom they judge. Nations in like man- ner must cast their anchors outside themselves ; but there is no “outside” if the State is all, and God is not. There can never be an effective league of na- tions until that league recognizes that it is subject to a Higher Power, the Ruler of Rulers, before whom each member nation must one day render an account of its stewardship. A league of nations has no right to expect signatory nations to surrender their sovereignty to its judgment, if the league is to consider itself sovereign and absolute, subject to no law except its own. For example, here in the United States we surrender certain rights to the govern- ment, such as the right to adjudicate our disputes and to socially order our property for the common good; but we do so only because the government is founded on the principle that not it, but God is the source of our rights. As the Declaration of Inde- pendence puts it: “ . . . all men . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” The government, in other words, may somewhat exer- cise control over our rights as the ninth Amendment to the Constitution implies. So with a league of nations: No nation will admit the league’s control over its sovereignty in international relations, un- less the league admits that it too is subject to a Law and a Justice which is not its own making but God’s. THE PAPACY AND PEACE 47 Reject that subjection to the spiritual and you run counter to the most obvious facts of life. A house would never be built if the architect went into the mural decoration; a picture would never be painted unless the painter were outside the canvas ; and na- tions can never be united into a League of Justice except by that which is outside the nations but bound to the service of Peace through Justice. But where find such an authority ? What is that institution which is: First, without arms, oil fields, colonies and therefore without material interests to defend ; and second, which is outside nations, not in the sense of being international but in the sense of being supra-national, and supra-national because spiritual — “seeking first the Kingdom of God and His Justice”? Somewhere in this world is a sovereign State, just as sovereign politically as the United States or Belgium, though in territory it occupies only a few city blocks, 80 acres to be exact. It has no army, no guns, no defenses. One hundred armed men could capture it tomorrow morning if they wanted to. It has no selfish material interests anywhere on the face of God’s earth. It wants only a space large enough for a crib on Christmas and large enough for a cross on Good Friday to enlighten shepherds and wise men and draw all men to its refreshing redemption. Its heart is committed to the most solemn obligation of shepherding 320,000,000 souls into the Eternal Pastures. It exists for no other purpose than to inculcate Justice and Charity in the hearts of men, and one day to go back to Christ to be judged more severely than any one on earth, be- cause invested with more spiritual responsibility. In PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE the head of that sovereign State is the only hope of world peace—the only hope. Please, do not make it necessary for me to spend more than a minute in answering a calumny about the head of this supra-national spiritual in- fluence which alone can combat the international forces of violence and hate. Let it be said once and for all: Neither he nor the Church is interested in usurping the rights of nations. Wounded by such lies, the present Head of that State, the 261st suc- cessor of Peter, pleaded: “Against such suspicions we solemnly declare with Apostolic sincerity that . . . any such aims are entirely alien to [the] Church, which spreads its maternal arms towards this world not to dominate but to serve. She does not claim to take the place of other legitimate authorities in their proper spheres, but offers them her help after the example and in the spirit of her Divine Founder who ‘went about doing good’ . . . “The Church preaches and inculcates obedience and respect for earthly authority which derives from God its whole origin and holds to the teaching of her Divine Master who said: ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's’ ; she has no desire to usurp, and sings in the liturgy : ‘He takes away no earthly realms who gives us the celestial' (Summi Pontificatus, NCWC, pp. 41-2). All of us are subject to prejudices to just the extent that we lack justice and charity, and by all of us I mean Jews, Protestants, and Catholics. When therefore the subject of world peace is in- volved, let us who have a common belief in God work together for the mutual good-will and material well- being of mankind. I should, for example, feel ashamed of a Catholic who, if there were a coal THE PAPACY AND PEACE 49 strike, opposed the appointment of a Baptist min- ister in the mine area as an arbiter of that strike. That Baptist minister is not going to throttle the miners and baptize them whether they like it or not. I would assume that as a man of God he was going to attempt to settle the strike in the interests of justice. Therefore, as a Catholic, I will rejoice and assist him in his efforts, glory in his achievements, and thank God for his unselfishness. Because a Jewish Rabbi is elected to an offi- cial position in a legal group, it would be the gross- est injustice for a Protestant or Catholic in that group to reject him on the erroneous assumption that he would make them read the Talmud every morning, and go to the synagogue every Saturday. No ! He, as a God-fearing man, works for the good of that group as well as any Christian, and far bet- ter than a bad Christian. Therefore I must not de- grade myself by cheap, whispered, snarling, bigoted anti-Semitism. Why cannot we look upon the good offices of the Papacy in exactly the same way? If the Pope works for world peace it is not to force Catholicism down our throats. He cannot force anyone to be a Catholic, for his religion teaches him that faith comes from God and must be accepted freely by man. He is no more interested in stamping out any religion than the decent-minded people listening to me. If I knew where there was a stronger supra- national force for peace than he, whether it be Jew or Protestant, I would accept it, though I would never, even under threat of death, surrender my love and belief in him as the Vicar of Christ on earth and chief shepherd of souls. Would you know how much the Papacy in our 50 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE time has prepared itself for peace and leadership for peace? Then listen to these two historical inci- dents : The first takes us back to 1920. It was that year that Lenin, after enslaving Russia in Bolshe- vism, gave the order to carry it through the world, beginning with Spain and Poland. “We must drive a sword through Europe, but it must first pierce the heart of Poland.’’ Following out these orders, the Commander General who has since been assassinted by Stalin, Tukachevsky, boasting that he would lead t}ie first anti-God army through Europe, swept into Poland like a scourge and in less than forty days the Poles retreated four hundred miles. In June the Reds captured thousands of prisoners and almost all of the Polish heavy artillery. In July, whole regiments of the new Polish army broke in panic. General Pilsudski of Poland, frightened and worried, moaned that “the nightmare of defeat” was sweeping over his entire army. All Europe shared the expectation that the Soviet forces would cap- ture Warsaw. Other nations, weak from the World War, decided to let Poland defend civilization alone. Archives and government offices were transferred from Warsaw; the diplomatic corps prepared to follow suit; the hour had come when man had no hope but in God. As one diplomat after another left fear-stricken Warsaw, there was one diplomat who telegraphed for permission to remain in Warsaw regardless of what had happened. Addressing the other diplomats fleeing for safety, he said: “I am not like yourselves only a diplomat. As a priest I have the duty of keeping up the courage of my peo- ple.” Notice how he did it. On the sixth day of August, this priest began a novena of prayer with the people of Warsaw. On THE PAPACY AND PEACE 51 the day that it opened, which was the Feast of the Transfiguration, hundreds of thousands of faithful, singing litanies of intercession to Our Blessed Moth- er, filed continuously through the streets. General Weygand of the Allied Commission, hearing of the approaching Reds, said to him : “Only your prayers can save us now/" The novena was to end on the fifteenth day of August, the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady. Two days before it ended, all hope seemed dead. The Red troops were within twelve miles of Warsaw, and to the north and south they had advanced be- yond the city. The Reds, confident of victory, had already nominated the officers who were to govern Poland. Three days before it ended they were with- in 12 miles of Warsaw, two days before it ended they were within nine, the day before it ended there was heavy fighting in the suburbs, as the Reds were now within six miles of Warsaw. Discouragement reigned supreme as Pilsudski left the capital to take over a desperate maneuver on which he had staked all, namely, attacking the enemy's flank with his ragged and bootless army. Eight hundred Cath- olic young men from the Warsaw high school made a miraculous charge at the same time Pilsudski was attacking from the rear. But they were not alone. They had gone out to battle after listening to this priest who urged them on to defend the cause of God against the forces of irreligion and to save the civilization and culture of Europe from barbarism. These young men made a frontal attack on Tukach- evsky as Pilsudski made his rear attack. Stalin, leading another army and lustful for the honor of capturing an adjoining city, overran the flank. The Red ranks broke, Tukachevsky retreated ; and 52 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE Europe was saved from Bolshevism at least for twenty years. And who was this man, who, on the day the novena ended, stood on one of the great battlefields of history and saw the Red scourge rolled back from Europe and its faith in God? It was Achille Ratti, the future Pope Pius XI. We now turn to another personage and another incident. In the year 1919 Communism was violent- ly strong in Germany. One of its first outstanding revolutions was in Munich, when on the 7th of April, ; under the leadership of a sailor, Rudolph Egelhofer, and three Bolshevik Commissars, Levine, Levien, and Axelrod, they set up a Soviet Republic. Calling themselves Spartacists and rising under the leadership of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxem- bourg, Communist gunmen roamed the streets. Then a Red army was created, which going into action killed 325 people on April 25th in Munich alone. But the number might have been 326 They had raked with machine-gun fire the home of the man who, unmoved by threats, had mounted the pulpit of the Munich cathedral against the orders of the Red committee. Finally, they decided io assassin- ate him. On the 29th day of April at three o’clock in the afternoon, Commander Seiler of the Red Army of the South and his aide-de-camp Brongratz, armed with orders from Egelhofer, appeared at the door of his house in company with a group of Red sailors. The thugs, gaining entrance to the house by threatening the servant with hand grenades, made their way to the library and with guns drawn awaited the appearance of their prey. Seiler took up his appearance closest to the door with a pistol drawn; the soldiers stood around in semi-circle, some with drawn guns, some with hand grenades. THE PAPACY AND PEACE 53 Suddenly the wanted man appeared. With a blas- phemy, Seiler threw out his pistol hand and as he did, it hit some metal on the man’s breast. This tall lean figure, grasping the pectoral cross and facing the raised guns, said in soft, low tones : “All right—kill me! But you gain nothing! I am only trying to save Germany.” Under the gaze of those spiritual eyes no one dared pull a trigger. Neither Seiler nor Brongratz nor the soldiers knew why they did not shoot ; when they got back to headquarters they were unable to explain to Egelhofer why they did not kill that man. They were never able to explain why a pair of eyes, a lean figure holding a cross, and a soft voice should be more powerful than their guns, grenades, and orders. There was only one thing that was certain. From that day on that man was afraid of absolutely nothing in all the world. And his name? Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII. The very Sunday of the week this present war was declared, I spent an hour with him in Rome. Speaking of the Nazi-Soviet treaty, he said: “It was no great surprise to me either. I had been ex- pecting it for some time. But it is a very grave danger for the world.” His expression then light- ing up with a smile, he added : “But we shall have peace.” In that man lies the hope of world peace. Not in Geneva, nor in Versailles, nor in the Kremlin, nor in Wilhemstrasse, nor in the Quai d’Orsay in Paris, nor in any capital of the world is to be found the hope of the future. In the name of the common Father whom we adore, let us recognize his good offices. We of the Western world who claim to be so interested in justice and the rights of the min- 54 PEACE, THE FRUIT OF JUSTICE ority have no scruples in entering into counsels with Hitler and Stalin who have been the assassins of justice. Shall we scruple at heeding the counsel of Pius, the representative of the Prince of Peace? We may not want his good offices for peace ; we may not accept them; but none of us will deny, deep down in our hearts, that the secret of world peace is hidden in him. But whatever be our feelings, let us do this as a minimum: Pray for Peace. For that reason I have inserted in the prayer book which I am sending out to those who request it, a Prayer for Peace. Will you say it? Thanks. God love you! CARDINAL HAYES STATES PURPOSE OF CATHOLIC HOUR (Extract from his address at the inaugural program in the studio of the National Broadcasting Company, New York City, March 2, 1930.) Our congratulations and our gratitude are extended to the National Council of Catholic Men and its officials, and to all who, by their financial support, have made it possible to use this offer of the National Broadcasting Company. The heavy expense of managing and financing a weekly program, its musical numbers, its speakers, the subsequent answering of inquiries, must be met. . . . This radio hour is for all the people of the United States. To our fellow-citizens, in this word of dedication, we wish to express a cordial greeting and, indeed, congratulations. For this radio hour is one of service to America, which certainly will listen in interestedly, and even sympathetically, I am sure, to the voice of the ancient Church with its historic background of all the centuries of the Christian era, and with its own notable contribution to the discovery, explora- tion, foundation and growth of our glorious country. . . . Thus to voice before a vast public the Catholic Church is no light task. Our prayers will be with those who have that task in hand. We feel certain that it will have both the good will and the good wishes of the great majority of our countrymen. Surely, there is no true lover of our Country who does not eagerly hope for a less worldly, a less material, and a more spiritual standard among our people. With good will, with kindness and with Christ-like sympa- thy for all, this work is inaugurated. So may it continue. So may it be fulfilled. This word of dedication voices, there- fore, the hope that this radio hour may serve to make known, to explain with the charity of Christ, our faith, which we love even as we love Christ Himself. May it serve to make better understood that faith as it really is—a light revealing the pathway to heaven: a strength, and a power divine through Christ; pardoning our sins, elevating, consecrating our common every-day duties and joys, bringing not only justice but gladness and peace to our searching and ques- tioning hearts. 94 CATHOLIC HOUR STATIONS In 41 States, the District of Columbia, and Hawaii Alabama .. WBRC, 980 kc WALA, 1380 kc Arizona Phoenix KVOA, 1260 kc Arkansas Little Rock KARK. 890 kc California KERN, 1370 kc Fresno KMJ, 680 kc Los Angeles KECA, 1430 kc KFBK, 1490 kc San Francisco KPO, 680 kc Stockton KWG, 1200 kc Colorado Denver KOA, 830 kc KGHF, 1320 kc Connecticut Hartford WTIC, 1040 kc D. of O. 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