YOUTH SERIES II. Moo'^rh, . - fit 7^333 YOUTH LEADERSHIP AND CATHOLIC ACTION Proceedings SECOND ANNUAL YOUTH INSTITUTE National Council of Catholic Women Washington, June, 1936 NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CATHOLIC WOMEN 1312 Massachusetts Avenue NW. Washington, D. C. YOUTH LEADERSHIP AND CATHOLIC ACTION Proceedings SECOND ANNUAL YOUTH INSTITUTE National Council of Catholic Women Washington, D. C. NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CATHOLIC WOMEN 1312 Massachusetts Avenue NW. Washington, D. C. Catholic Action — “The participation of the Cath- olic Laity in the apostolate of the hierarchy.” —Pope Pius XI. THE COMMISSION TO THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CATHOLIC WOMEN: “Organize Youth ever more widely on that foun- dation of that piety and wisdom which is proper to you, and above all in exemplifying and applying the truths of the Gospel to the social life of the day. The security of our Catholic youth in their Christian life is a thorough knowledge of the teaching of our Holy Church, the guardian and expositor of the re- vealed truth of God. To give to our youth, particu- larly to the girls and young women of our day, a knowledge, a love, of Catholic truth and a determi- nation to carry it out both in personal life and as members of Catholic organizations, is really a great crusade to which you may lend all the resources at your command.” His Excellency, The Most Reverend Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, Archbishop of Loadocea, Apostolic Delegate to the United States. November 7, 1935. National Council of Catholic Women. Page 3 FOREWORD The Second Annual Youth Institute, sponsored by the National Council of Catholic Women, June 21-27, 1936, was held at the National Catholic School of Social Service. In order to make the many fine talks and discussions available to our Youth Leaders throughout the country, we hereby present the Proceedings of the 1936 Institute, “Youth — Leadership and Catholic Action.” It would be im- possible, of course, to present the papers in entirety, so an abridged form of each is given. Should the entire paper be desired, it may be obtained by writ- ing Headquarters. “Youth—Leadership and Catholic Action” is a companion booklet to “Youth—Today and Tomor- row,” the proceedings of the 1935 Institute. National Council of Catholic Women. Page 5 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/youthleadershipcOOunse TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Introduction — — 3 Foreword — ———*— 5 Notional Council of Catholic Women Youth Program “The Council and Youth” —. Katherine R. Williams 9 “Youth Leadership” Anne Sarachon Hooley 11 “Our Catholic Youth” Most Rev. Bernard J. Sheil, D.D. 13 Training for Leadership “The Art of Leadership”— .*. - -—.—Mary F. Riley 18 “Youth Leadership of Catholic Alumnae”—*.—— Mary B. Finan 19 Programming “Community Programming” * Frances S. Engel 20 “Making the Youth Program Diocesan-Wide” Mary Finnan 22 “Diocesan Programming” — * Tess Marie Gorka 24 “4-H Clubs for Rural Areas”— Q Gertrude Warren 26 Vocational Preparation “The American Youth Commission” ... Rev. George Johnson 29 “Vocational Preparation of Youth” —Beatrice McConnell 31 “New Emphasis in Vocational Guidance” Sister Teresa Gertrude, O.S.B. 33 “Youth Needs for Vocational Guidance”—* .—Mary I. Eberhart 35 Employment “Employment Problems of Youth” Elizabeth Morrissey 37 “Social Security for Youth” —4..-*-*..*.-*..*.-*— .**...Jane M. Hoey 39 “Activities of the Office of Education in Behalf of Youth” Bess Goodykoontz 42 “The National Youth Administration” | —Aubrey Williams 45 Parent Education and Homemaking “Youth and Parent Education”—*—Rev. Edgar B. Schmiedeler, O.S.B. 49 “A Young Woman Looks at Marriage”— —Mrs. James Hayden 51 “A Young Man Looks at Marriage” — —.John J. O’Connor 53 “Education for Homemaking” * . —. Clara V. Bradley 55 “Youth’s Attitude Toward Homemaking” .....Mrs, James F. Ryan 59 “Parent Education and Youth in a State Set-up” —.Agnes O’Connor 61 “Catholic Maternity Guilds” * * Mrs. Mary Filser Lohr 62 Page 7 PAGE Spiritual Activities “Spiritual Value of a Youth Program”— Rev. Francis P. LeBuffe, S.J. 64 “Liturgy”—+ . - .. - Rev. Michael Ducey, O.S.B. 65 “O'Ur Sodality” ...- - - Louise Yingling 67 “The Campions” Elizabeth Walsh 68 “The Catholic Evidence Guild for Juniors” * Eleanor Crowley 70 “What the Mission Crusade Means to the High School Student” Mary Ann Fugitt 72 Cultural Activities “Technique of the Discussion Study Club”. -.—Mrs. Frank O’Hara 74 “Public Library Aid to Study Clubs” . - 4-_. Lucille Walsh 75 “Catholic Youth and World Peace” _ Elizabeth B. Sweeney 77 “Social Reconstruction and Youth Study Clubs” Mary Catherine Schaefer 79 “Catholic College Facilities and Their Use ‘After Hours’ ” Sister Julie, O.P. 81 “Catholic Literary Revival” _ —Paul J. Ketrick 83 “Books for Youth”— +—. Mrs. Philip Homung 84 Recreational Activities “Handcraft” —.—.—Beatrice Harrison 86 “Community Drama Leadership”— Mrs. Marie Moore Forrest 87 “One-Act Play Tournaments” Elizabeth K. Peeples 88 “The Value of Drama to Youth” * * Nancy Ordway 90 “Directing Youth in the Drama” Denis E. Connell 91 “The Blackfriars Guild and the Development of Youth” Rev. John McLamey, O.P. 94 “Athletics for Girls” * Mrs. Maurice Rosenberg 97 “Games” _ Marian Abrams 98 Resolutions —_ 99 Page 8 NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CATHOLIC WOMEN PROGRAM: THE COUNCIL AND YOUTH Miss Katherine R. Williams National President, National Council of Catholic Women This is the Second Annual Institute for Youth held under the auspices of the National Council of Catholc Women. The Insti- tute is planned for the presentation and demonstration of a possible program to develop leadership among those who may direct youth activities and members of youth groups seeking to develop their local programs, whether as members of national organizations, so- dalities, girls’ clubs, or other groups. The National Council of Catholic Women, called into existence by the National Catholic Welfare Conference, is a federation of Catholic women’s organizations. It provides a center for the gathering of and dissemination of information to Catholic women in every field of endeavor—religious, economic, social—in which Catholic women may and should be interested. Again, it provides the channel for that exchange of experiences which is so essential for united Catholic Action. To carry out this program, the National Council of Catholic Women functions through committees departmentalized to meet the need of the various fields of action. Since its inception, study clubs, the family, problems of industry, immigration, parent- teacher associations, and youth have claimed attention. Recent developments! have stressed the need for special interest in Youth, and to that end this Institute has been called. We are making a good beginning, but we shall only make a good ending, if, in addition to participation and observation, we get something out of the Institute which will broaden our own lives and expand our deliberations, conclusions and exercises here into a Youth program of concrete and practical action. We must train others to carry on as we of the older group relinquish our work to the initiative and leadership of the splendid young women who are preparing to take up the work. For this work of future service we must recruit, train and inspire youth. We need the spon- taneity, idealism and spirit of youth to keep alive the ideal and vision of our faith and loyalty. We grow timid, tired, discouraged, indifferent, but the youthful vigor and courage of youth stimulate us to further effort and fire us with desire that we do not fail Page 9 them but that we do all that lies in our power to open new avenues of work and recreation, that our social and national life may be such that it will safeguard their religious, intellectual and civil freedom. We must work to the end that the ideals of youth may find expression and its vision realization in a less sordid and mer- cenary world. Of course, our first and paramount duty is to secure for all our youth religious training and practice. While we have churches and schools, pastors and teachers, we do not yet have these in sufficient numbers to meet our need. I would therefore urge upon all here present to aid in adequate provision for religious instruction, religious study clubs, lectures and programs, junior Newman Clubs and other phases of extension of religious teach- ing where the ordinary means are lacking. If we combine cultural, physical, economic and practical in- struction, with the feel and thought that religion is the essence of all activity, its application a part of every department of our lives and its fruit, “the peace of heart,” the “consummation of desire” and “the true code of living” not as a restriction but as an avenue to fuller, safer, happier, nobler lives, we shall give to our youth that which alone can make them lead the heroic lives which conditions in modern society demand. What heroes we have to present to them for inspiration and imitation—Christ our King and His Saints! Let us make them real and human to our youth. If time permitted, I would like to outline for you the aids of- fered in formulation of your programs through the literature made available by the different departments of the National Cath- olic Welfare Conference—Catholic Action, the National Cath- olic Welfare Conference News Service, our own Monthly Message, and innumerable pamphlets will keep you in touch with all that is being done not only in our own country, but throughout the world in the interest of youth. Let us be informed, not only with a view to increasing and strengthening our own culture, our own ideals, our own citizen- ship, but to safeguard our children and their heritage. Let us be “All for Christ.” Yes, it means effort, sacrifice, and coopera- tion, but sacrifice, sometimes deprivation, suffering, persecution are necessary before we realize and know the fruits of our Faith, the privilege of its exercise. May we all profit by the opportunities of this Institute and make it productive by our participation, practical by using its inspiration and knowledge. Such a group of women working for such a cause, spreading by example and bringing to a triumphant close our second institute, cannot fail to acomplish great things. Page 10 YOUTH LEADERSHIP Miss Anne Sarachon Hooley National Chairman of Youth, National Council of Catholic Women It is with a great deal of happiness and with a deep sense of the importance of your being here that I extend to you, the leaders of our Catholic youth, a sincere welcome. Gathered here under the auspices of the National Council of Catholic Women you will consider your responsibilities to the youth of our land. You, who are planning the youth program in many dioceses throughout the country will aid in the building of the men and women of the nineteen fifties—men and women who will build into the social fabric of their day the sacred imprint of Christ, the King. And all this leadership which is yours, because of the riches . of your faith, must ha,ve several qualities. It must have first of all, a spiritual integrity. You and the youth you lead must be able to know the reason for the faith that you maintain and to be able to share it with those you touch. It must have intellectual balance. You will be hearing from time to time of all the various “isms” and “osophies” which many young people think they believe. But you have a measuring rod whereby to compare those that are true and so will not fall easy prey to the Communists who would have you believe their false philosophies. It is said that nearly every public high school has in it a boy or a girl working, sometimes innocently, for the cause of Communism because that boy or that girl has not sufficient intellectual balance with which to analyze the claims of the so-called agents of liberty. In this way the youth is an unwilling tool of the very forces which would, if allowed to grow, destroy that country whose freedom is so dear. Communism is no idle scare. It is a real menace. The country boy no longer goes into town and buys a gold brick from the slick salesman, but the city boy or the city girl buys the paper gold brick of Communism from the slick Red. Youth, in addition to spiritual integrity and intellectual bal- ance, must have a cultural appreciation and an understanding of beauty. For that reason your dramatic clubs, your music clubs, your poetry groups, your arts and crafts, must flourish in every parish youth program, along with your sports, dances and other activities. Had the youth of America been trained to an ap- preciation of truth and beauty we should have had no need for the Legion of Decency, because their own innate sense of what is fine and worth seeing would have caused them to turn “thumbs down” upon the pictures of crime and licentiousness. They would, Page 11 in such large numbers, have seen it to be the cheap and crude thing that it was, that the box office would soon have indicated the trend and withdrawn such pictures of its own accord. Just twenty years ago a soldier-poet, flaming with courage and gallantry and devotion to his country and his fellow men, looked out upon the barren, bloodstained, shell-torn battle lines of France and seeing in fancy, fields of Flanders where poppies soon would bloom above the dead, he wrote: “I have a rendezvous with Death, God knows* 7 1were better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, But I’ve a rendezvous with Death And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.” Likewise our Catholic Youth looks out on a world barren of spiritual riches, torn and bloodstained with the strife of our twen- tieth century living and sees how many other youth will one day lie dead of spirit because they have builded for themselves the wrong temples. Youth has a rendezvous not with death, but with life. You hold in the hollow of your hand the most exquisite jewel of the ages, the gift of faith, and it is the standards of that faith and that truth which places upon you the responsibility of aiding youth to keep the rendezvous with life. You know the per- fect ideal of family life, built upon Christian marriage and cen- tered about the hearthstone of the home. You know the standards of social justice, that the rights of men may never be superseded by the rights of property, which is a soulless thing; that ethics may not be separated from economics nor the individual from the social. You know 1 the standard of recreation of which I have just spoken for it was given to us by the great Saint and Philosopher of play, that recreation is not all sports, it is not the indulgence of the senses, but it is the re-creation in the human heart of the spirit of joy and of beauty and of service. Jorgensen, the Danish poet, who himself must have plunged into the depths in his frantic search for truth says in his preface to the life of St. Francis of Assisi, “The ultimate wisdom of liv- ing is to serve.” There is no power for building charm and char- acter like service. Yea, I will even go further—there is no open sesame to happiness like service. And to you, the Leaders, we wish this joy and happiness of service for Christ the King. Page 12 OUR CATHOLIC YOUTH The Most Rev. Bernard J. Sheil, D.D. Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago, Assistant Episcopal Chairman, Department of Lay Organizations, National Catholic Welfare Conference No doubt about it, youth has its problems. But at the very beginning let it be clearly understood that youth is not a problem. To anyone who loves youth, youth is a joy. And the privilege of working with youth i$ one of those blessed things consecrated by the Christ Who loved young men and women and permitted to us men a share in His own work and love, thus to enrich the lives of us who are allowed to work for and with the generation that is happily maturing under our eyes. For long before my consecration as a Bishop, I had been per- mitted the happiness of working with youngsters. And though never for a moment did they seem to me a problem, I came to know at first hand the terrible problems that fill the lives of the boy and girl growing up in the midst of our modern topsy-turvy collapsing civilization. Shall I take you to, let’s say, the Chicago parks? Shall I show you the children of the depression sleeping on the park benches, so exhausted from days on the road that neither the warmth of summer, ithe rains of spring nor the colds of winter, nor the laughter of pleasure seekers of a summer night can rob them of their deep slumbers? Shall I stand with you as a freight train pulls into the yards, and off the tops of cars and out from the empties and up from the gondolas, pile hundreds of thousands of youngsters, boys and girls alike, who are our tramp population of civilized America? Shall I take you to< the juvenile courts and have you watch the boys who pass before weary eyes of the judge? Criminals almost before they know the meaning of crime! Of- fenders before a law the meaning of which they hardly under- stand! Felons, guilty less of the offenses written after their names, than of homelessness and poverty and neglect and the obligation shifting for themselves in a cruel and ruthless jungle- world ! Let’s climb the steps of the tenements and see the poor little anaemic children whose playground is a fire escape and then, the court of a refuse filled air-well, and then, the traffic-infested street, and finally, the street corners where the gangster is made and the prostitute is trained. And to these youngsters who should be learning the lessons of good citizenship and wholesome living come instead the easily- Page 13 learned lessons of crime, the alluring and gaudy enticements to vice, and the glittering criminals inside and outside the law,—all of them powerful magnets drawing them away from the teaching of the classroom and the short instruction of the parish church, if indeed, they have ever seen the inside of the church. These youngsters are not in themselves a problem. They are sweet and wholesome of heart; they are open and candid of smile (how often I have found that out!); they have a measure of love that has never been tapped because no one has cared to, or thought to tap it; they could be responsive to high ideals—if they were permitted to see those ideals in the blackness and gloom that hems round their youth. Problems? No more so than your sweet children at your knee and in your nursery. But with what terrifying problems they are faced! How to live decently, how to fight the attractions of vice and the inducements of easy money romantically gained with gun and racket; what to do with the leisure that follows the brief hours in school and at church. Nor need we think that these problems are confined to the children of the slums. Our age has succeeded in making life extremely difficult for all classes of children. There is the child of the divorced couple torn between a separated father and mother, loving both, belonging to neither. There is the child of the limited family, bred in an atmosphere of deliberate selfish- ness, deprived of the example of heroic parents and shut away from the mellowing and maturing association with little brothers and sisters. And no boy or girl today but faces the problems that our age has created for him in almost maddening fashion. If he has faith, he must battle for that faith against the most insidious and brilliant siege ever laid to the belief in God that rises so naturally in the heart of a child, ever laid to the love of Christ which awakens a quick response. A deliberate campaign has been waged to woo children away from God, their Heavenly Father, and from Jesus Christ, their eldest Brother. They have been forced to listen to the sneers of leaders who themselves have lost all faith in God and in man and even in their own, selfish selves. They have been asked to give up all hope of eternity, and to concentrate instead upon the selfishness of earth. Need I ever indicate how our age has laid traps for the inno- cence of youth? How the purity of childhood is quickly snatched at with filthy hands? How magazine and cinema and play and custom have painted sin, evil and vice as alluring and delightful, or funny and exciting; as the relaxation of the strong and the re- ward of the beautiful? Anyone who aspires to the high vocation of serving youth must, Page 14 then, bring to the task of working with them and among them, two things: His own deep personal love of the boys and girls to whom he gladly and almost gaily gives his life; a realization that they are a badgered, harassed, tricked, and courted generation, who, whether privileged or underprivileged, are simply surrounded by problems and difficulties. If they are underprivileged, their own problem and the problem which their friend and guide must face with them is: ‘‘How can they be saved from an environment which incites them to sin, evil and from associations which make sin and evil pitifully easy and failure little less than inevitable?” If they are privileged, the problem is: “How can they be saved from the ap- palling selfishness of a selfish age? How can their talents be turned from the systematic selfishness which we have seen culti- vated all about us, and how turned towards God and a love of their fellow men? How can they, in a time of systematic mediocrity, be made leaders whose eyes are fixed on God and their eternal destiny, whose hearts are pure enough for the strong and honest blows that they must strike, and whose hands are guided by a love of their fellow men and trained by high ideals to lofty and noble adventuring?” You can see, then, that anyone who comes to talk of youth, and far, far more, to work for and with them, has a task almost world-wide in its proportions. The problems of youth begin long before birth in the hearts and souls of their parents. You may recall that Napoleon once being asked: “When should a child’s education begin?” gave his answer: “Twenty years before birth with the education of its mother.” And so about these young people of ours we ask the questions: will they be selfish or unsel- fish, loving or hateful, cultured or ill-bred, filled with faith in God, or facing life with a black and ugly despair? Youth’s problems extend to his school: Will he find merely an education that packs his mind with facts and teaches him that two and two makes four, and that two chemicals in a test tube will do predictable things, and that William the Conqueror landed in England in 1066; or will his school train his heart and help him to face and conquer sin, orientate him toward an eternal des- tiny, and train and strengthen him to move through the undoubted perils of a deceitful, tricky, attractive, yet unsatisfactory world to the immortality for which God fashioned his deathless soul? The problem of the boys and girls goes on: Where shall they play and with whom? What shall they read? What sort of the- ater will stimulate their imagination and excite their quick re- sponses? If they must gang, as gang they will, will that gang be Page IS made up of incipient criminals or of young citizens destined to hold important trust in our democratic community? Will their sports be decent or debasing? Will they be athletes or “sports”? And when they come to their church, will they find a sympathetic priest ready and willing to walk with them as father and guide and friend, or one who stands embarrassed and a little at a loss in their presence? You can see, the whole question of youth is an enormous one, and yet, upon its solution depends—well, we have said it a thou- sand times. Like all platitudes it must be repeated: for the one thing men never remember is a truth true enough to have become a platitude. From the boys and girls of the present moment we shall draw the presidents and captains, the leaders in art and in- dustry, the priests and Sisters, the fine fathers and mothers;—or the gangsters and pickpockets, the racketeers and molls, the petty thieves and rotten grafters, the murderers and courtesans of the future. That is why we who worked out the program of Chicago’s Catholic Youth Organization knew that we had an Herculean task. But we also' knew that we had a precious trust. Our gra- cious Cardinal Archbishop had said that he would rather save one little kiddie from the street than rear the most beautiful edi- fice. And we knew that that was not merely a statement of his own personal aspirations but a challenge and a command to us. We knew that we had within our city all sorts of boys and girls, from the youngsters who drifted in with the latest freight train from the coast to the pampered and spoiled only darling of “the Gold Coast”; from little Micky whose hands were already skillful in picking a pocket or robbing a fruit merchant to our young men entering the Medical School of our Catholic Universities, from little Maggie whose mother was a drunkard and whose father was in jail to the sweet convent graduate making her valedictory from the palm-filled stage of her exclusive school. We had to save the underprivileged for Christ. We had to win the privileged to a sense of their responsibilities to Christ; we had to make the children of the slums know that we loved them ; we had to make the children of the rich know that they had had love enough and favors enough showered on them to share with their less fortunate brothers and sisters of the tenements. Our schools must be reminded that teaching Religion was not enough, unless they made that teaching of Religion sufficiently inspiring to lift the boys and girls to a sense of true leadership in their parishes and their communities. We needed to remind our priests that the most precious portion of their flocks were the little ones of God. We had to bring the great resources of our Catholic Page 16 laymen and laywomen to bear on the problem of how to provide proper homes and surroundings and playgrounds and games and sports and entertainment and associations for the underprivileged youngsters in the gutter. We had to weld all our Catholic young people into a unity of heart and purpose with Christ as its center, the Blessed Sacrament as its source of strength, the church and school as its efficient and effective units, and Catholic comrade- ship as its great ideal. Page 17 TRAINING FOR LEADERSHIP: THE ART OF LEADERSHIP Miss Mary F. Riley Executive Secretary, National Circle, Daughters of Isabella The principles and methods of Leadership are not unique with any one organization, but are common to all groups sponsoring programs for Catholic Youth. A Catholic program for Youth must first be based on sound Catholic philosophy, with the whole life of youth, natural and supernatural, given consideration. Since the effectiveness of any program rests largely with the leader, she should be one whose own philosophy of life is truly Catholic. She should have in mind always that the young people as the children of God are created for a future life and that the manner in which the present one is lived determines the nature of the future life. Other requisites vital to a leader are common sense, cheerful- ness, understanding, tact, initiative, vision, imagination and cre- ative ability. She should be ready always to subordinate her de- sires to those of her group, interfering only when plans are apt to be dangerous to life or health. A, leader should enjoy Youth and the things that Youth enjoys. A leader with one or two hobbies of her own will give to her group a sympathetic attitude toward the personal satisfaction that comes from “a joy pursued” and will by example lead others into happy leisure-time activities. The wise leader “leads” but never “bosses.” The young women should plan their own programs with the leader giving general su- pervision and inspiration. She should have numerous “helps” at hand, so that when the girls come for advice she can present enough material to allow them a choice. Genuine enjoyment and satisfac- tion will be experienced if the leader permits the girls to make their own suggestions and develop their own programs. The ideal leader is one who has the happy faculty of winning the confidence of the girl; who is honest and sincere in her deal- ings with them and who will give praise when merited and never blame before others. To her will come the reward of the confi- dence of Youth and the sharing of their activities. We would have more such leaders today would they but realize what a glori- ous service it is to help young women to truly enjoy youth and. thus assure peace and happiness in later life. Page 18 YOUTH LEADERSHIP OF CATHOLIC ALUMNAE Mrs. Mary B. Finan Youth Chairman , International Federation of Catholic Alumnae Since the preparation for leadership is largely the work of the school, it is natural that the sponsors of Youth groups should look to Catholic Alumnae for leadership. The graduates of our academies and colleges are fitted to lead Catholic Youth into a greater appreciation of the real Catholic philosophy, by virtue of their own training in our Catholic schools. This training for leadership has been done through the ages in an indirect way, but now a more definite course in Guidance and Leadership considers the needs of youth, the possibilities of good leadership, the dangers to be averted: and the advantages to the leaders as well as Youth. Vocational guidance has been established in many colleges whereby each student prepares herself for the place in society where she can best serve and at the same time secure her own de- velopment. It isi only through an understanding of her own apti- tudes and talents that an individual can find the fullest expres- sion for the highest possibilities of her intellect and spirit. Very often self-expression is smothered in uncongenial soil and the tragedy of the misfit seems almost universal. It is wise guidance that directs this energy of Youth into constructive channels. Through training for leadership of groups our youth today is learning to know and to assert Catholic principles of living. At the same time our young women are learning. Catholic women today cannot be simply passive and tolerant; to be leaders they must be aggressive, yet not too militant; brave, yet feminine — women who reflect in their lives the all-embracing charity, kindli- ness, sympathy, tenderness and mercy of the Master. These young people shall go forth as the “torch bearers” of the future, holding aloft the light of truth and faith to show the way to others. Page 19 PROGRAMMING: COMMUNITY PROGRAMMING Frances S. Engel Executive Secretary, Catholic Charities, Buffalo, N. Y. “Community Programming” may be considered to be social planning for a community. The community may be world-wide in scope; it may be national, or state, or local. Our discussion will be restricted to community planning in the comparatively small communal unit of the parish, the neighborhood, the town, or the city. Such planning may concern itself with one, or with many problems; for example, it may consider “juvenile delinquency” as its specific, project; or it may study “youth in all its ramifications, such as youth and family life, youth and education, employment, unemployment, recreation, church and social life; delinquency, etc.” Despite its communal or project scope; its technique is the same: it will unify and integrate the interest and the action of com- munity groups into a comprehensive plan for individual and com- munity well-being. It will develop and promote a program. Community planning is as fascinating and challenging as it is hazardous. It offers moments of high success, and days of weary groping. It demands enduring faith; clear vision; heroic patience, consummate skill, and infinite tact. A sense of humor and the ability to bear up under disappointments are invaluable assets. It requires mental balance and poise; its exponents should be idealists who “have their feet on the ground” and “their heads in the clouds.” All these, and more it demands; but its “pay is high.” It repays heartbreaking rebuffs, with the thrill of strug- gle, with the joy of working with people, for people; out of every disappointment, there comes the solace of achievement, and the desire to carry on, though other hands may bring the plan to fruition. As the first step towards community programming, we will be- gin our work in prayer for guidance and wisdom, for vision and patience. With this beginning, and in the realization that skill will be of no avail unless God is with us, our work will continue in prayer. We will study our community—its resources, its liabili- ties, its needs. We will outline our objectives, we will interest our co-workers and the persons who will be benefitted by the project. We will plan a diplomatic, practical, efficient attack on the prob- lem. As has been said, we will “Find the facts; focus the facts; filter the facts; face the facts; follow the facts.” Each community multiplies many times the relationships sug- Page 20 gested in any one family. The churches have societies for men and women, for boys and girls. Each community has its athletic groups, its business, professional and labor associations, its cul- tural and social clubs, its educational centers and groups, its fra- ternal, service, civic, patriotic and political associations, its na- tionality and racial groups. If you depict your community as we are picturing the maze of group relationships in any community, you will be humble be- fore its problems, its joys, its sorrows. If you evaluate the indi- vidual and the group life in your community, you will discover its composite community life. Then, and only then, will you be prepared to “program” wisely; to use its strengths, facilities and abilities to better serve its interests, its needs, its people. With the facts in mind, we will develop our plan of action. First and foremost we will work with and under constituted au- thority. If the project is to be parochial, there is only one person to whom we can go. The parish priest is the shepherd of his flock and no activity can be properly called a parish activity un- less it is sanctioned by the parish priest. If the program is to be diocesan in scope, the Bishop alone can give it validity. With the requisite permission or commission, from the consti- tuted authority, we will “sit down together” with our community people; the key people who can influence public and group opinion; the people who may give financial support to the pro- gram, with representatives of the secular and religious press, and with the people who will make use of the program. Let us remember that it is more fun to plan than it is to be planned for. The work will progress more effectively and happily if we accept the suggestions of those who will participate in the program, either as “programmers” or clientele. Let us pool our community resources—of people, groups, public and private agencies for research, finance, facilities, guidance, en- couragement. Let us know and work with the social, educational, recreational, church and health agencies and share their composite strengths to conquer the; communal dangers, liabilities and needs. Community programming is needed,—only because there are un- answered needs in a community. Its job is to eliminate dangers and weaknesses ; to foster the socially desirable influences that will make for optimum opportunities for the individual, and social hap- piness and well-being of its people. Have we considered our plan in its relation to the general well- being of the community—such as physical and mental health; education; religious and moral training and living; recreational and leisure-time interests; cultural, economic and social security. If we are “programming” for youth, leisure time will loom large Page 21 in our consideration of his 24-hour day. It has been said that “leisure time is a beautiful garment, but it will not do for con- stant wear.” Too many youths have worn threadbare this once precious garment which today has degenerated into enforced leisure. If we believe that “Spare minutes are the gold dust of time, the portion of life most fruitful in good or evil, the gaps through which temptation enters,” we will be aware of the problems of the youth in our community, in our nation, in our world. Catholic Youth is organizing, not because it is merely a part of a world youth movement, but because Mother Church recog- nizes the need for our youth to have an abundant life here and hereafter. Prayer makes this spiritual element of our work pos- sible. Skilled service in worldly activities is demanded by our youth. Both should be given, yet only as we ourselves find, and as we help youth to find, the perfection that is Christ, do we reach the ultimate objective of Catholic living. ’Tis said that “thoughts are but dreams until their effects be tried.” Let us take these dream thoughts and dream dreams, and see visions, until we are on fire! ourselves! Let us kindle this fire in others until we make real the dream of Social Justice, of Chris- tian brotherhood, in a world where youth and age, together, have returned His world to Christ. MAKING THE YOUTH PROGRAM DIOCESAN-WIDE Miss Mary Finnan Youth Chairman, Scranton Diocesan Council of Catholic Women Our Holy Father, Pius XI, has sounded the clarion call for a Catholic Youth movement, and the trends of the time disclose the need of concerted action and real organization in making the Catholic Youth Program not only diocesan-wide, but nation-wide. At the present time, a series of Youth Movements are in the process of development throughout the entire country. Many of the sponsors and experimentors of our modern Youth Movements leave out of their calculations the influence and power of religion. Their ideas for the betterment of the world make a creedless, prayerless, and almost beliefless reconstruction of the relation of man to his fellow man. They aim to have statistics, economics, and card index take the place of faith, hope, and charity. A noble equipment, with which to take our place among workers and scholars, to illumine all these questions, impersonally, and un- biasedly, by showing the true position and teaching of the Church, regarding the development of the Catholic Youth Program, is very necessary. Page 22 How then may our Catholic Youth Program be developed? The national Youth program has been developed along Dio- cesan, Deanery and Parish lines. Intense preparation was given to the construction of the Diocesan Youth Program previous to the organization of Deanery Youth Chairmen. It is the duty and responsibility of the Diocesan Youth Chair- man to assist each Deanery Youth Chairman of the diocese to formulate and put into effect a proper program for each parish within the respective deaneries. The diocesan committee, which is composed of ithe Diocesan and Deanery Chairmen, constitutes in itself an agency1 of exchange, or clearing house, whereby activities and problems of deanery and parish organization are presented for acceptance and solution, at the quarterly Diocesan Youth Com- mittee meetings. Plans that work out well in one deanery or par- ish might be presented to another deanery or parish for experi- ment, and perhaps solve a difficulty. This tends to keep the Dio- cesan Committee in active contact with the individual or parish organizations, and in turn, enables them to present to the Diocesan Chairman a detailed report of the work of the respective parishes within each deanery. At a recent Diocesan Youth meeting each Deanery Chairman was presented with copies of “Guiding Princi- ples for Organizing Summer Leisure Time Activities” for every parish within her deanery. Since the Deanery Chairman is responsible for the organization of a Youth Program in each parish within her deanery, she must find herself active and vitally concerned with suggestions and ap- plications until a proper and workable program presents itself. No one locality includes in its program all of the suggested Na- tional Program. Certain phases are to be stressed and developed according to immediate or local needs, and the wishes of the pastors, or moderators appointed by the pastors. The real work of the parish falls upon the parish organization—how then may a parish Youth Program be developed? By the parish Youth Chair- man, and leaders in volunteer service. Throughout any diocese there are hundreds of young women trained and graduated from the various Catholic Colleges of the country, who have had training in drama, music, nature lore, art, handicrafts, sports, and other specialized subjects. To these young women we may particularly appeal for volunteer service. Due to the varied and elastic program of activities, we may enlist the aid of our Catholic lay teachers, such as kindergarten, domestic arts, music, and art teachers, providing they possess natural lead- ership abilities. One of the most important steps in organizing and developing our Catholic Youth Movement is a training course, or institute Page 23 for volunteers. These institutes may vary in length; some might be held once or twice a week over a period of time, or an institute of intensive training for a period of two weeks, just prior to the opening of the summer season—or at the opening of the fall or winter season. In these institutes, theory and practice might be combined. Demonstrations of the proposed program could be given, practice in projects of program scheduled, and the objec- tives made clear. The faculty of such a training course may be selected from recognized volunteer specialists in program activi- ties. With proper organization and preliminary exploratory work, a competent faculty for training of leaders may be sug- gested by the National Council of Catholic Women. Each diocese could sponsor its own institute for the training of leaders, where volunteer leaders from every parish in the diocese may attend. If we are to prepare now for the future development of our Catholic Youth Program, we need zealous, enthusiastic, and self- sacrificing Diocesan Chairmen, and they in turn must have the sin- cere, untiring and energetic cooperation from all their Deanery and Parish Chairmen, if we are to put into effect, in a systematic way, the Diocesan Youth Program, in every parish of the diocese. Enthusiasm, zeal and interest in behalf of a cause are great forces towards accomplishing our goal. Do not permit the splen- dor of the dream to fade. “In this latest of centuries woman has had again thrown open to her the opportunity to perpetuate a glorious achievement in the work of the lay apostolate, and the time has come when the growth of the Catholic Youth Movement, like that of the tree or flower, must result in blossom and fruit.” DIOCESAN PROGRAMMING Miss Tess Marie Gorka Chairman of Youth, Fort Wayne Diocesan Council of Catholic Women In a diocese that has a Diocesan Council of Catholic Women the Youth program for young women has the best possible begin- ning. It has the official commission for Catholic Action; it has the approval of the Ordinary of the Diocese and it has an organiza- tion interested in youth and guided by a national organization. We must never allow our programs to become mere ideal paper programs, but must keep before us very definite ideals in terms of the problems confronting the modern girl. The fact must always be stressed that each diocese has its own peculiar situation to face and so must pick from the national pro- gram those activities most suited to its needs. It would, of course, Page 24 be futile to attempt a program suited to a large metropolitan area in a definitely rural area or vice versa, but each can answer its own need with the flexible program of the Diocesan Councils of Catholic Women. In the same manner deanery and parish pro- grams will differ, yet follow the same general plan. Before any diocesan program is attempted, provisions should be made for the training of the sponsors and leaders of special activities, so that all will work harmoniously to achieve the ends desired by the Ordinary of the diocese. A careful study of exist- ing facilities and organizations should be made, for it is the func- tion of the Council to strengthen and coordinate such groups. The foundation stone in the Youth program is the parish. Each parish Council of Catholic Women should have a committee of women to assist the leader and the young people in every manner possible. The chairman of the parish represents the parish in the Deanery Committee, which should be headed by the Diocesan Chairman. Thus is unity and good will between all groups ef- fected. If Youth is to take a really active part in the program, youth must have a voice in its development. To accomplish this object youth councils may be organized in each parish with the elected officers of the young women’s groups of the parish represented. The function of the parish youth Council is to work in cooperation with the parish Youth Committee in activities. Where there are several parishes in a city, provision may be made for city-wide councils as well as deanery councils of youth, whose function will be to plan and regulate the conduct of inter-parish activities. Regular meetings of these groups make it possible for a helpful exchange of ideas, which is conducive to cooperative effort and friendship. The united functioning of these various groups has many good results. First of all, the women of the diocese become familiar with the problems the Bishop faces in safeguarding the interests of Youth; an increasing number of women grow thoroughly ac- quainted with local situations affecting Youth, and the young peo- ple themselves come to realize their own responsibilities. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, the City-wide Youth Council, made up of representatives of the various parishes in the city, conducted a dance on Easter Monday. The planning and the management of the dance was left entirely in the hands of the young people. Despite the fact that it was customary for young people in that community to begin their dances at ten or eleven and end them at two or three, these young people of their own choice decided to have the dapce begin at nine and end promptly at twelve. A definite stand was also taken on the question of intoxicating li- Page 25 quors with a regulation prohibiting the use of such liquors rigidly enforced. The unusual regulations provoked considerable com- ment in the community at large. One of the secular papers carried a very splendid editorial commending the stand taken by the Cath- olic young people and urged other groups to follow this good ex- ample. While it is true that young people are frequently emotional and unmanageable they are also capable of accomplishing many fine things for God when brought under the influence of tactful and competent leaders. Leadership then is the solution of many of our difficulties in fostering youth activities. It is no easy task to secure the right type of leadership. Adults, women as well as men, are sometimes emotional but a careful sifting of the parish personnel will produce a sufficient number of women capable of rendering real service. Willingness, however, on the part of these women is not sufficient in itself. The volunteer leader must be trained. Every diocesan council could make a great contribution to the cause of youth by devising some means of providing leadership training courses for local youth leaders. If every diocesan council would adopt such a policy it would give stability to the program and contribute much to the welfare of the Church and State. We have some very fine potential leaders among our young women. They readily listen to inspirational talks, but they lack the courage to go ahead due to the fact that they have no insight into the duties of a volunteer leader. We must give more thought to this question of training and providing the opportunity for such training so that our young women will be able to direct the energies of others along the proper lines, defend righteousness and religion and carry on courageously for Christ through the medium of youth programs. 4-H CLUBS FOR RURAL AREAS Miss Gertrude Warren Director, 4-H Clubs—U. S. Department of Agriculture 4-H Club work is a part of the national agriculture extension system. Through it rural boys and girls, ten to twenty years of age, are taught to usq better agricultural and home-making prac- tices and to appreciate the finer and more significant things of life. Through the 4-H Club program boys and girls are brought into intimate contact with all the interwoven problems of their own home and community life. It includes a specialized educational enterprise for rural youth which aims to develop individual abilities and capacities. The program includes the use of mottos and slogans, emblems and colors, that will develop attitudes in an Page 26 understanding way. It is a great deal more important to develop the right kind of attitude toward life and toward people than to- ward subjects. Such slogans as “Plan your work, work your plan” ; “To make the best better,” are helpful. Leaders should develop situations in which young people can react in a constructive way. Then we are building true manhood and womanhood. The program should be developed by the members themselves, under the guidance of the leader; the choice of activity or project should be voluntary. Through the analysis of their own needs, the rural young people are brought into contact with the live problems of the community by representation on committees of leading men and women of the community, and this is the best type of civic education. From the outset, young people should be led to feel that the program is theirs and that they are responsible for its success. In formulating their programs they should be made to feel that much is expected of them not only from the standpoint of their home making and agricultural activities, but also from the stand- point of their own behavior as related to all their club activities. The leader should remember that praise goes farther than being called down. It is most important in the present day when there is so much feeling of insecurity. A feeling of success on the part of the individual will maintain interest in the work ; therefore it is important that a progressive, challenging program in keeping with the abilities of each member be worked out. It is thus possible, in time, for each member to gain the habit of success and to arrive at the turning point in life when he realizes that he can size up situations accurately, and, having decided to go ahead, is justified in being confident that, with hard work, he will succeed. The 4-H Clubs of the U. S. Department of Agriculture work in cooperation with State Colleges of Agriculture and county exten- sion organizations. Clergymen, teachers and other professional leaders are local leaders for nearly one million young people each year. We leaders take youth into our confidence. We have a lot to give them, and it is up to us to guide them. The work is that of the young people, and there is no conflict at all. Leaders develop a spirit of friendliness and understanding; they must be tolerant, patient and sympathetic toward the short- comings of the young people, confident that, in time, they may be overcome. It is essential that praise be rendered when the work done warrants it, for in this way interest, satisfaction and self- confidence are developed, and these are fundamental to maximum effort on the part of the club members. The local leader must aim to stay in the background while help- Page 27 ing members to assume responsibility, and to provide situations so that larger responsibilities may be assumed by the members. While working with the group he must be making careful plans for the future and always anticipating the next step. A friendly sug- gestion goes farther than a display of authority. The local leader is often the ideal of the members of the group, and he must be very conscious of the example he sets. Further information about 4-H Club work may be secured from your county agent, the extension director of your State Agricul- tural College or from the Extension Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. Page 28 VOCATIONAL PREPARATION: THE AMERICAN YOUTH COMMISSION Rev. George Johnson Director, National Catholic Welfare Conference Department of Education and Secretary, American Council on Education The American Youth Commission was set up in May, 1935, by the American Council on Education. Under the Chairmanship of Dr. Horner P. Rainey it aims to make a comprehensive study of the care and education of American youth—a fact-finding investigation to be extended over a five year period—in order to find out just exactly what ought to be the American program of the future in regard to the education of our young people. The Commission’s responsibility is comprehensive, as it will devote itself to all problems affecting the fortunes and development of youth of twelve years of age and over. It is vitally concerned with matters of health, recreation, vocational adjustment, crime, and other problems closely related to the educational program, while its primary consideration is the educational adjustment of youth to new social conditions. The Commission cooperates with all governmental, educational and social agencies interested in the so- lution of the common problems related to youth. An outline of the working purposes of the study of the Com- mission falls under four heads: 1. Comprehensive analysis of the characteristics of youth, and evaluation of influences which press on them. 2. Survey of the commonly accepted goals of the care and education of youth; determination of the adequacy of the goals in the light of present economic and social conditions. 3. Investigation of the agencies concerned with the care and education and eventual recognition of procedures which influence young people. 4. Recognition and distribution of plans of action—publica- tions, demonstrations, etc. In certain centers throughout the United States, field studies are being made; a staff associate is cooperating with the National Resources Committee in a study of population problems, and as- sistance is being given to a study of 140 agricultural villages. Five major investigations will be conducted along the following lines: 1. A comprehensive study of the attitudes of youth. 2. A study of the influences to which youth are subjected. Page 29 3. A study of the needs of rural youth. 4. A study of the needs of Negro youth. 5. A study of youth in the home. Unemployment among youth was a major consideration of the Commission, and it recognizes that this problem is the first re- sponsibility which it must assume. A committee was appointed to make an attack on this problem in an effort to find ways and means of spanning the gap which now exists between the com- pletion of education on the one hand and the satisfactory adjust- ment of young people in places of employment on the other. When thinking of the education of youth above the elementary age, one must consider the secondary schools. To date the second- ary school system in this country has consisted in bringing together under one roof all the! children of the same age level to be subject to the same instruction. This has done a great deal of harm to American culture, for those who are not educable in the sense of academic educability cannot be taken care of except by voca- tional education, and in an effort to keep all the youth together, easy courses, fresh air courses, courses in citizenship, courses about things that were fitted for these children have been introduced into the schools. We have not had the time nor the resources to concentrate upon those thoroughly educable. The idea that hard courses are a challenge persists: yet brains and ability have been watered down. It is beginning to be apparent that there are three kinds of peo- ple between the ages of twelve and twenty: 1. Those destined by nature to be thinkers and learned individuals, who will take their place in the leadership of law, medicine, and statesmanship; 2. The more practical people whose fields of activity are along the lines of engineering and business; 3. An uneducable class. In secondary education we must think of each class in a slightly different way. Eliminating for the time being the first two classes, those destined for colleges and universities, and those capable of leadership in business, we will have to devise some sort of system of education and care that will be on a part time basis of half school and half work. There are certain individuals who need nothing so much as the opportunity to go to work. To have the responsibility of a job, to be paid for it, will do more for their character than reading and study. The whole problem of the secondary school must be studied from a new angle and a lot of the prejudices and half ideas of the past must be dropped; we must get down to fundamentals not only from the angle of education, but from that of general up- bringing. Page 30 In accordance with the purpose of the American Council on Education, which devotes itself to scientific inquiry, to the provi- sion of machinery for consultation, and to the stimulation of ex- perimental activities by institutions and groups of institutions, it is attempting to get an adequate idea of the youth problem and what could be done and what is being done for their care and education. With changing conditions, existing institutions are quite unprepared to care adequately for the needs of millions of youth. Youth care is a threat to national welfare, and through conferences and these investigations it seeks to clarify educational issues, define the problems and enlist the appropriate agencies for their solution. As a footnote, it must be remembered that there is a religious side to the whole question. The extent to which incentive to re- ligious values has flown from this country is appalling; the notion that religion is the fundamental and prime factor in human ex- istence is being dissipated, unless you mean by it social service. The fundamental thing in life is that we were created for God’s purposes and designs, and people will be happy as they conform to that will. Religion is something that has to be lived by every- one—it has to be ingrained into one. What we need for the solu- tion of the problem of youth in this country is the bringing back of religion. VOCATIONAL PREPARATION OF YOUTH Beatrice McConnell Director, Industrial Division, Children’s Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor The position of youth in the period of economic adjustment through which we have just been passing is a matter of great im- port not only to youth itself but to the country at large. In the past few years the normal culmination of progress through home and school to work has not come and youth has lost sight of its promised land of economic and social adjustment. Although the trend of employment has been and is rising there are still a great number of unemployed who have not been ab- sorbed back into gainful employment. Youth forms an integral part of that group. According the United States Census of 1930 approximately 16 per cent of the population were youths between 16 and 25 years of age. About a year ago the Works Progress Administration estimated that almost precisely 16 per cent (15.9 per cent) of the persons on relief were young persons between those ages. The boys and girls of 16 and 17 are more heavily repre- Page 31 sented in this unemployed group than are those between 18 and 25. Among the young people on relief in urban areas more than half have had no more than elementary school education. In view of this situation it can easily be seen that the absorp- tion of young persons who have not had a background of work experience involves many problems. It is here that vocational training comes into the picture. The responsibility of the schools for giving the background of education and training which will make it possible for the young person to secure a job and adjust himself to it successfully cannot be over emphasized. What are the criteria of vocational success? What factors enter into success or failure on the job? Edward T. Thorndike in his book on “The Prediction of Vocational Success” has attempted to give a list of such criteria, which include: 1. Kind of work. 2. Level of job. 3. Length of job. 4. Interest or satisfaction on job. 5. The responsibility of the job. 6. Wages. 7. Chance of promotion. In other words merely to have a job is not enough, it must offer satisfaction as well as wages, it must give opportunity for growth as well as satisfy an immediate need, it must be work that the worker has an interest in and an aptitude for, and it must give some assurance of permanence or security. To achieve this measure of success youth must be trained and prepared to do his part. We have tended in the past to think of this training or vocational education as the teaching—or the learn- ing—of special skills or processes. In certain fields that principle may still continue as in typing or filing or in machinists’ work, tool dressers, etc. But by and large the great need is undoubtedly for the development of vocational education which will give a broad training in skills and aptitudes that can be readily trans- ferred from one operation to another. Nor is that enough, there is need also for that broad general training which gives a back- ground for the development of judgment and initiative. Voca- tional education, and academic education as well, must adapt itself to the needs of a constantly changing industrial world. A voca- tion may be made obsolete in much less time than it takes to train for it; hence the need for a training that cultivates adaptability, aptitudes and general skills which may be readily applied to dif- ferent types of work. Page 32 Nor is the ability to do a job the whole story. Youth must be taught not only to earn a living, but to live. Education in its broad sense, be it for the boy or girl in industry or trade, or for those who have the opportunity for professional careers, should broaden the outlook and provide for avocational as well as voca- tional interests. It must develop those social attitudes that so greatly influence the adjustment and the happiness of the indi- vidual both at work and in community relationships. Vocational guidance goes hand in hand with vocational educa- tion and the effectiveness of the latter must to a great degree de- pend on the careful selection of training fields in the light of the interests and the aptitudes of the youth to be trained. Intelligent placement is the next step and if our young people are to be guided and directed so that they will have the greatest possible chance for successful economic adjustment there must be a close correlation of these phases of activity, education, guidance and placement. NEW EMPHASIS IN VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE Sister Teresa Gertrude, O.S.B. Instructor in Guidance, Catholic University Catholic education has always had as $ts ideal the preparing of the student for complete living, that is, for time and for eternity. Pope Pius XI, in his Encyclical on Christian Education, states : “Christian education takes in the whole aggregate of human life, physical and spiritual, intellectual and moral, individual, do- mestic and social, not with a view of reducing it in any way, but in order to elevate, regulate and perfect it, in accordance with the example and teaching of Christ.” If educators are to “start, stimulate and direct processes of self- activity that shall last as long as life,” their responsibility is very great. Also if the phases of guidance to be included are the “phy- sical and spiritual, the intellectual and moral, the individual, do- mestic and social,” the responsibility looms even greater. Guidance or counseling in the religious sense is as old as the Church herself. But the word “vocation” no longer has only the religious connotation—it is applied to all occupations, and we realize that making a living is the foundation for making a life. For these reasons Vocational Guidance has become a necessary part of our educational system. Guidance in some form has always been present in high schools where the teachers have been interested in students. Usually, however, this informal type has included only a part of the stu- Page 33 dents. The frank, open pupil approached the teacher with ease, and presented his problem—and still does—but there are myriad pupils who are not conscious even that they have problems. The counseling program must reach all students, and to do so, must be organized to a degree, without being formal, which would de- feat the purpose of the work. “The underlying principles which govern vocational guidance activities,” according to the National Vocational Guidance Asso- ciation, “are based upon the recognition of individual differences, of the complexity of modern occupational life, of the right of the individual to make his own choices and upon the realization that the adjustment of an individual to his occupation is an ever* changing situation.” The United States Census for 1930 in its volume on Occu- pations, shows us nearly six hundred various lines of work, and more than 27,000 different jobs. A choice of vocation by the stu- dent, therefore, involves the task of learning as much as possible about the vocation in which he is interested. Practically, it in- volves also the very important task of learning as much as possible about himself, his talents, his capacities, his aptitudes. Our test- ing program has not yet been perfected to the point where ob- jective measures may J>e substituted completely for the subjective judgments, which are so often faulty. Every real counselor under- stands that it is the privilege of the individual to choose his own lifework, so that the counselor never makes the decision. True, she must often dissuade the ambitious parent who has chosen an occupation much above the level of the student’s capacity, with a social climbing endeavor. Our Catholic philosophy demands that we recognize the parent as holding first place in the stu- dent’s life, since the family is the unit of society. The counselor, therefore, must take the parents into consideration in the coun- seling program. Often she will be called upon to show the parent that the occupation chosen for the child is unsuited to him or is beyond his ability and capacity, and, if persisted in, will result in an unsuccessful, unhappy life for the child. In actual practice, two levels of study must proceed; the stu- dent’s study of himself, with the aid of an experienced and trained counselor, and the study of the occupational field. Somewhere, between these two levels, an area of occupation will be found where the student’s ability, interest and capacity will be in harmony with the requirements. The new emphases in Vocational Guidance are rather on the techniques, plans or methods by which the student works. His knowledge of occupations must be broad, he must know sources Page 34 of information and be able to evaluate them, he must be made self- active in his own interest, not only in studying the occupation, but allied fields. He must come to realize that his future depends upon himself, and the store of varied knowledge he builds up for himself. Most of all, he must know that his habits, formed now in his adolescent years, will help or hinder him throughout his life. The adjustment of the individual to his occupation, an ever- changing situation, is made possible through this means. Habits are built up which slrauld prepare a solid foundation of character, of appreciation, of Industry, and of a contributing life, “indi- vidual, domestic and social.” In this way we shall have “started, stimulated and directed processes of self-activity which should last as long as life.” YOUTH NEEDS FOR VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE Mary I. Eberhart Harrisburg Diocesan Council To be Catholic is to know Catholicity. And to know Ca- tholicity is to appreciate the meaning and the end of life. Upon this knowledge depends the ultimate happiness of our youth. Education prepares youth for his life-work. The life-work of every Christian should be to live that “he may pass through temporal good things so as not to lose the eternal.” Catholic edu- cation considers the religious, the social, and the occupational life as a harmonious whole, all subservient to the final end of man. Our schools began and continue with but one objective in mind — to offer the means and to point the way to better living; the means, Religion, the way, a Christian life in the world or a re- ligious life apart from the world. As the more mature outlook begins to assert itself, the stu- dent finds himself, and suddenly realizes that education is not books and classrooms only; and further, that the protective guid- ance of the classroom will not continue forever. The youth is now faced with the question: Why am I here? What is waiting for me when my four years are completed? How shall I equip myself to face what I now realize I shall meet? This is the moment for the Catholic college to exert efforts in behalf of youth. It is now, as the mind seriously grasps the real meaning of this preparation, that the school has lasting influence in molding the characters and the lives of her students. Having attained the age for higher education, youth has a Page 35 capacity for deeper meaning; moral integrity is to be admired instead of secretly ridiculed or openly scorned ; virtue is to be ad- mired. And in the social order, the student comes to the realization that dependability and honesty, courage, initiative, and dignity are prerequisites of the successful business executive, the clerk in his office, the professional man, the parent and the teacher. Taking for granted that we must accept the fact that Catholic education is the only education for Catholic youth, we appreciate the importance of the part played by companionships offered in the Catholic college. To a Catholic college come the Catholic youth, and in the majority of instances, they* are the truly Cath- olic youth. By this we mean that Catholic principles have been inculcated from childhood ; and that Catholic parents or guardians have culminated their religious and moral training in the home by choosing a Catholic environment for the higher education of their children. Companionship with this type Catholic is an inspiration to those whose attitude toward religion has been luke- warm or negligent. They see that modern ideas were erroneous; that piety isn’t the “bunk” ; that virtue at all times, under all cir- cumstances isn’t “sissy”; that a practicing Catholic is admired by his fellowmen, followed by his companions; successful in his ac- complishments. The factors mentioned above are but a few of those contribut- ing toward the successful preparation of youth for his vocation in life. The program of the Catholic college is to fit her student body for marriage, for religion or for a place in the business or professional world. The graduates are a body of strong militant youth, confident of their place in the world; equipped with a sound philosophy of life, ready to meet and face their adversaries as Catholic men and women with Catholic minds, Catholic thoughts, Catholic ideals. Page 36 EMPLOYMENT: EMPLOYMENT PROBLEMS OF YOUTH Miss Elizabeth Morrissey Notre Dame College, Baltimore, Md. The problem of modern youth in the economic world must be approached from two angles—theoretical and practical. With the whole economic set-up revolving around big business and large scale production with its insistent demand for skill and training, the old method of getting jobs by the trial and error method is a thing of the past. The part time work, the summer vacation job, the work after school hours, which in an earlier period gave a boy or girl a chance to try his or her skill in various occupations, are all things of the past for most young people. Since modern youth cannot find his special aptitudes and special abilities by the old trial and error method, special guidance is needed in order to aid them in finding their place in the economic and social world about them. So concerned are young people to- day with the need for immediate jobs and the resulting pay check that jobs, any kind of jobs, are taken without thought of any- thing except a livelihood. The work may not be that for which they are fitted or work at which they may make progress. They may find in it no real outlet for their energies, they may find in it no real satisfaction, no chance to express the ability that may be theirs. To those of the older generation who face this problem honestly, youth offers a challenging responsibility. It is urged that we be doubly careful in our statements as to youth’s readiness or willingness to work. Young people today are just as ready and eager to work as they were forty years ago. They are just as anxious to feel themselves a part of the economic world as were their fathers. They are just as much concerned with their future and their desire to plan for a future with the normal out- lines of home and family as has been any previous generation. Do not blame the young people for the condition that the older generation has handed on to them. It is tremendously important to see to it that modern youth can find a place in the present economic and social and political world. Unless he does find his place he becomes the prey of unrest and propaganda of many kinds. Misfits or unadjusted persons are always easy prey for organizers. When they have honestly tried to find jobs again and again and have been re- buffed too often they feel themselves failures. ’Young people are Page 37 far more willing to face facts than the older generations who all too frequently shut their eyes to things they do not want to see. Young people today are brutal in their facing of facts. The “So What” of modern slang is an apt expression of the realism of youth. They want facts. Theories and promises and isms and platitudes all go down before that blunt “So What.” This ex- pression is a challenge to the older generation and it must be answered. No broad generalities will suffice. They must have a frank avowal of the basis for the present social and political and economic conditions. Bewildered and perplexed the young people in their inexperience cannot find the answer even though they know something is vitally wrong. They must have facts—specific facts—data peculiar to their own community. There is where the practical side of the problem and its possible solution enters in. To settle the problem in a satisfactory manner with an eye to permanent settlement two things are essential. The survey of possible openings in the occupational fields and some form of occupational guidance to direct young people into the right field must be given. Surveys in each community are suggested as a practical ap- proach to the difficulty. It is important that we face the fact that we are an urban people and that because of this requirements for certain occupations and possibilities of openings must be made available to young people who cannot be expected to know the city conditions as they once knew the possibilities of a small town or rural community. Youth must have guidance in the search for work. Facts must be made available as to requirements for certain occupations, as to too crowded fields, as to occupational trends. Since the quali- fications for many positions become constantly more exacting, direction in school must keep these facts in mind. Since young people can no longer discover their own abilities by the old trial and error method of part time jobs it is necessary that help be given in proper placement. Tests of all kinds are needed—physical, mental, psychological—diagnosis of many kinds in order to prevent too many misfits. Not only is immediate placement the goal to be considered, but proper preparation for possible later permanent employment must be urged. The conditions in which young people find themselves today are not of their making. These conditions are the work of the older generation whose responsibility they are. Young people to- day are just as anxious to work; just as eager to find themselves; just as ready to carry their share of the burden as the young people of any other generation. They are paying the price—and a very high price—for the failures of the older generation. To let Page 38 them grow into a discontented, embittered group is cruelty to those who are in no way responsible for the conditions they are forced to meet. To let them grow into a discontented embittered group is dangerous to society as a whole and means trouble ahead for the young people, their families and their country. SOCIAL SECURITY FOR YOUTH By Jane M. Hoey Director, Bureau of Public Assistance, Social Security Board Security is one of the essentials of human life—as necessary in childhood and youth as in maturity and old age. People have always known this, though in less troubled times they are more likely to take it for granted than we have been able to in recent years. We must assure security for our youth. But do we know what kind of security we want for them, and if we know, have we the means to provide it? These two questions, and our attitudes toward them, are the vital factors in determining how we utilize the resources for security which present-day life offers us. The most recent, and in some ways the most important, of these resources is the Social Security Act, passed by Congress in August, 1935. One of the major objectives of this Act is the protection of childhood. But we will expect too much of it—or we will expect the wrong things—if we do not begin by clarifying these two questions. First, then, what kind of security do we want? An external security gained by artificial safeguards? You send thousands of young men to a C. C. C. camp. In the emergency into which we have fallen, the C. C. C. has filled a desperate need. It has meant a breathing space in which to regain physical and mental health. But if these young men come back to face the same problems they left six months before—what then? Singling out a special class or group and providing for them at a particular moment does not provide security. The world being what it is, security always has a price—it can’t be had without some minimum of financial outlay. But dollars and cents are not all that must be added into this sum if we are to get the right answer. They yield security only if they are utilized to provide for youth the kind of training which leads to well rounded physical, mental, and spiritual development. What are the qualities for which we look in the well adjusted, “secure” per- solnality? Since no two of us are alike, there is no set standard. But certainly such qualities as integrity, intellectual honesty, Page 39 alertness, interest and satisfaction in doing a thing well, and the capacity to work with others are essentials. We need to regain our respect for jobs that require hands. It is only in these comparatively recent years since machines have done so much of the world’s work that we have tended to forget the dignity of laboring with our hands as well as with our heads. Today we are attempting to help our youth regain some of the age-old satisfactions of skilled craftsmanship. We are giving them opportunities for hobbies, from music and painting, to mechanics and gardening. Sometimes riding one of these hobbies develops such deep interest and genuine skill that what wasi undertaken as an avocation becomes a real life work. Interest and skill—these are two primary sources of inner security. They are inherent in integrity and the other qualities which have been suggested as the true goal of education. Modern life has done much to rob our youth of them, to put them to mechanized machine-tending or to almost equally mechanized jobs of “selling” this or that to an already oversold public. We have not yet found the solution to the problems of in- dustrial society. To do so we shall need better organization in industry itself. We cannot hope to attack successfully the prob- lem of helping our young people get the right kind of jobs until there are enough jobs ; until we have provided the minimum essen- tials of steady employment and a living wage. But the fact that we are beginning to recognize that there are problems means that we have taken at least a first step toward their solution. This brings us to our second question—granted that we know more or less what kind of security we want for youth, how can we help them get it? One of our chief difficulties is the fact that each of us, working alone, can do so little. Because the individual is so helpless, the importance of group thinking and group action in behalf of youth is increased many-fold. Most of us have more opportunities for group action than we realize. We are all members of some com- munity and in every community like-minded people can come to- gether to work for a common purpose—no matter how small their beginnings must be. Private organizations on a nation-wide scale can also do—and are doing—much. But in a democratic society thq traditional and most effective channel for group planning is through government. This is what makes the Social Security Act so significant. It represents a step foward in cooperative planning to meet some of our most urgent social needs—and it gives us a nucleus for further planning in the future. It sets up certain safeguards which will help to re- move some hazards and it provides orderly, well-planned ways of Page 40 meeting certain others. These are embodied in ten provisions, covering public health and child welfare, unemployment and old age. With one exception these plans call for joint Federal-State action. The Federal government offers its assistance and financial cooperation. But the plans are State-initiated and State-admin- istered. The Social Security Act is an enabling act. It makes it pos- sible for the Federal government to assist the States in expanding and strengthening their own public welfare and public health pro- grams. But the States must take the initiative. To States which set up plans in line with the broad general requirements of the Act, the Social Security Board and the other Federal agencies, make grants. The Act specifies for each measure the particular basis on which these Federal grants will be made. Success in all of these State and community programs demands intelligent and active public support. If communities are to make the most of this opportunity, they must not be content merely with providing a little money for the needy, or with setting up paper plans for public health and child welfare. These are service pro- grams, and the service they should offer requires experienced and competent administration. There is need in this country for a clearer recognition of the contribution which skilled social workers can make to these community services. By making specific grants for administration—covering its entire cost to the State for un- employment compensation, and sharing the cost with the State in the other State-Federal programs—the Federal government in- dicates the importance it places upon good administration. But the best guarantee of effective administration is the understanding and support of communities themselves. The Social Security Act offers a flexible, well integrated and soundly financed plan for meeting a variety of needs. It is not a panacea for all our ills. Some people feel that this is discourag- ing. It would be impossible—and probably unwise—to try to forestall every chance and provide for every emergency. All life worthy of the name is a challenge. And if—through the Social Security Act and other public and private endeavors, and through our own efforts at group planning—we can help young people to develop the inner security of a well adjusted life, they will welcome that challenge. We must help them grow toward that self-knowledge which makes one ready to weigh his own assets and liabilities; to accept his limitations and make the most of his capacities. Young people today have found themselves up against undue pressures and com- petitions. Perhaps it is only natural that this has made some of them reluctant to face facts. But the only way they can ever Page 41 meet these pressures and competitions is by finding out what direc- tion they really want to go in, and what paths toward this goal are open to them. In the last analysis the one fundamental of security is the ability and the courage to stand on your own feet. Other people can lend a helping hand, but youth must not expect to lean too hard on others. Well rounded personal development —growth toward integrity, self-knowledge, and skill in kinds of work that you are fitted to do—these are still the foundations of individual social security. ACTIVITIES OF THE OFFICE OF EDUCATION IN BEHALF OF YOUTH Bess Goodykoontz Assistant U. S. Commissioner of Education By the summer of 1933 the Office of Education had become aware that the depression was falling heavily upon youth. Un- employment in the case of many was stretching out into years. Those who had prepared in school or college for some particular skilled trade or a profession were fast losing their employability. Two and a quarter million additional youth reach the age of em- ployability each year. Young people were roaming the country by the tens of thousands. Crime was increasing among youth. Although young people were flocking to the high schools and re- maining for postgraduate courses, the school curricula were being curtailed. Some of the most useful educational activities were be- ing cut off and there was decreasing opportunity in the schools to make the sort of adaptation which was obviously needed. Stu- dents were finding it impossible to remain in college or to begin their college courses because of their inability to meet the neces- sary expenses. During the spring of 1934 it became increasingly clear that the activities thus far provided by the Federal Government and the States were inadequate to meet the needs of the increasing numbers of unemployed youth. Accordingly, in April, 1934, repre- sentatives of all the Government agencies having programs con- cerned with youth were called together by the Commissioner of Education. Two questions were discussed by the group: (1) Are the conditions and needs of youth such as to justify the Govern- ment’s concerning itself with a program in their behalf? (2) If so, what Government agency might best take the initiative in devis- ing the Government’s program for youth? Without dissent the representatives of the Government agencies Page 42 concerned agreed that the situation warranted Government action. It was recognized that no agency of the Government conducted a program sufficiently comprehensive to involve all youth needs and that cooperation of several Government agencies would undoubt- edly be required in mapping out or in carrying through the desired youth program. It was likewise agreed, without dissent, that education must play a large part in any youth program, and that the Office of Education was the most appropriate Government agency to take the initiative in devising such a program. In consequence of these two decisions by this conference of Government agencies, a conference was called by the Commissioner of Education, June 2 and 3, 1934. This conference brought to- gether not only those same representatives of Government agen- cies—some 20 in all—but approximately 50 of the leaders in youth programs throughout the country. These leaders were concerned with education, recreation, guidance, and employment. At the close of the two-day conference, a report was adopted embodying what the conference regarded as the essential requirements of a youth program in the communities throughout the country. The report recommended that the Federal Government’s leadership in the program should be exercised through a commission including both Government and non-Government personnel, with its execu- tive officer located in the U. S. Office of Education. Upon this basis the Office of Education began its active campaign to bring about some Government action in behalf of unemployed out-of- school youth. The activities of the Office have fallen into three categories: (1) The work of the Committee on Youth Problems, (2) efforts toward the creation of a permanent division of youth service in the Office of Education, and (3) efforts toward the creation of a Federal Government emergency program in behalf of youth. These activities will be discussed briefly in order. First, a survey of the needs and conditions of youths in repre- sentative communities throughout the United States was made. The other study planned by the Committee on Youth Problems was a comprehensive inquiry to discover what activities were be- ing carried on throughout the United States on behalf of unem- ployed out-of-school youth. The data thus obtained was com- piled and classified, and the material gathered into five brief bulletins, as follows: “Youth: How Communities Can Help”; “Youth: Leisure for Living”; “Youth: Finding a Job”; “Youth: Education for Those Out of School”; “Youth: Guidance for Those Out of School.” The first three of these are published; the last two are in press. Persons interested may secure copies as long as the Page 43 free supply lasts by addressing the Office of Education. Copies will be for sale by the Superintendent of Documents at any time. The second activity of the Office of Education has to do with the efforts to establish a permanent division of youth service in the Office of Education. The problems calling for some Government consideration were thought to be of three kinds: 1. The complexity of social and industrial organization makes it difficult for a young person to find his best place in society; therefore, some kind of guidance and counseling service broader than the schools, broader than the employment agencies, broader than the homes, but including all of these and others, seems neces- sary in any community. 2. Schools need to be more intimately related to both the civic life and to the industrial life of the community. Part-time school and part-time job needs to develop as a more prevailing practice. 3. Even under normal employment conditions leisure is rapidly increasing. This should prove to be a great blessing, but unless people can be properly equipped to enjoy it wholesomely, it may turn out to be a curse. This is a problem involving all of the agencies of the community—homes, churches, schools, libraries, and others—and there is no present governmental agency concerned with it. The third group of activities carried on by the Office of Educa- tion in the interest of youth has had to do with an emergency pro- gram. After many conferences with individuals, both in the Gov- ernment and outside, a proposal was drafted for setting up a com- prehensive program under the administrative jurisdiction of the school officials in the many communities throughout the United States. Advisory councils were to be set up in Federal, State, and local units to bring to the schools the counsel of the many other groups interested in a youth program. The result of all this labor was embodied in a proposal from the Office of Education which was made the basis of a conference of national leaders on February 11, 1935. These national leaders endorsed the major features of the program without dissent. The Government’s answer was the establishment of a National Youth Administration. In this program some of the features of the Office of! Education’s plan are being carried out, even though the plan of administration is different from the plan contained in the Office of Education proposal. To summarize this brief account of the Office of Education’s extraordinary activities in behalf of youth: First, the development and administration of the education program of the CCC camps; Page 44 second, the initiation of the work relief program in the field of education which now offers instruction to something over 300,000 youths; third, the initiation of the program of college student aid which now provides jobs for 120,000 college students and 200,000 high school students; fourth, the studies carried on by the Com- mittee on Youth Problems resulting in the publication of six printed bulletins and three mimeographed circulars; fifth, the per- sistent agitation for a permanent youth service in the Office of Education; and sixth, participation in the proposals and plans which led to the creation of the National Youth Administration. THE NATIONAL YOUTH ADMINISTRATION Aubrey Williams National Director, National Youth Administration, Washington, D. C. The Catholic youth organizations and the National Youth Ad- ministration are interested in the welfare of the same group of people. We both are grappling with the same problems, and we both fully realize that these problems are too vast for any one individual or for any one organization to cope with; so a fine spirit of mutual assistance has sprung up throughout the country in the past year between the youth service agencies and the National Youth Administration. There is, of course, no panacea which will create overnight an abundance of opportunities for youth. For no separate Youth Problem exists upon which it is possible to put one’s finger and say: “All that is necessary is to solve this, and youth’s worries will vanish.” On the contrary, youth’s problems are inextricably bound up with the social and economic problems which are troubling us all. This doesn’t mean that only a very little can be done to- wards lessening the burdens produced by the problems which pres- ent-day youth inevitably encounters. A great deal, indeed, can be done; but it has to be done on many fronts. Education, recre- tion, vocational guidance and training, private and governmental employment—all must be woven into any program that deals at all comprehensively with youth’s problems. The purpose of a considerable part of the National Youth Administration’s program is to keep open the doors of education to a large number of young people. This is being done by giving high school, college, and graduate students a chance to earn enough money to continue their education. Not that the National Youth Administration with its comparatively small student aid alloca- Page 45 tion has been able to reach all out-of-school and out-of-work youth between sixteen and twenty-five years of age. Nor, if it had been possible to reach the approximately 4,000,000 young men and women in this category, would the overcrowded classrooms of the country have been able to take them back? But in providing wages to approximately 419,000 students the National Youth Administration has at least gone far towards alleviating one of the great problems with which youth is faced. The student aid program has proved its value in three ways. Not only is it providing thousands of young people with a means of staying in school and college. It is also postponing the en- trance of these young people into a satiated labor market where each would be one of millions looking for a job. Furthermore, the work these students perform in earning their National Youth Ad- ministration wages generally gives them valuable work experience not readily found elsewhere. They leave school and college with something more than just book learning to help them in their job hunting. The dominant question in the minds of those students who are graduating or leaving school this month is the same as that which hundreds of thousands of out-of-school young people have been asking themselves for months, if not years. It is: how can I get a job? With little or no work experience, with heads of fami- lies usually given preference on jobs, with the labor market almost swamped by job seekers, these young people have an unusually hard row to hoe. To give young people this chance, as well as the individual attention which they need, the National Youth Administration has provided twenty-four carefully selected State employment offices with junior guidance and placement officers who are devoting their whole time to the youth group. Projects designed to give special training to young women in- clude work in nursery schools, in sewing and garment making, and assisting district nurses. In addition, Pennsylvania has set up, for example, a girls’ vocational and social center which is giving a three-months’ course in domestic service and is assisting the placement bureau in finding jobs for those who complete the course. After the first six months it is expected that this project will be self-supporting. I need not dwell upon the necessity for a sound recreation pro- gram in meeting the difficulties raised by the increase in youth’s leisure hours; for you are all well aware of this acute problem. Suffice it to say that the National Youth Administration has recog- nized youth’s recreational needs by planning the majority of its work projects in this field. Page 46 Here the National Youth Administration has acted as a kind of “catalytic agent,” which helped crystallize the previously con- fused and sometimes opposing aims and purposes of those who have wished to help youth. Community planning has been stim- ulated. Government agencies, too, have cooperated with the Na- tional Youth Administration in making it possible, through the use of their existing facilities, for a maximum proportion of our appropriation to find its way into the pockets of unfortunate but industrious young people. Not being allied with any special field of youth service, the National Youth Administration has been in a position to coordinate the agricultural, industrial, recreational, edu- cational and other agencies and focus their activities on youth. The National Youth Administration’s program, as this sum- mary has indicated, is thus many-sided. It is not based on theories but on actual, demonstrated need. To meet these, it has, not set up wastefully duplicating machinery but has, in a large measure, worked through existing educational and service agencies. There has been no attempt to impose plans from a central office far re- moved from the scene, since in all cases, the individuals acquainted with the local situations have been relied upon to analyze what was needed and to suggest plans by which these needs might be filled through National Youth Administration projects. We must frankly admit, however, that in spite of its compre- hensive program, the National Youth Administration, partly be- cause of its comparatively small appropriation and partly because youth’s problems are part of our country’s basic problems, has been unable to do more than grubstake a few of the pioneers-to-be. For youth has much pioneering to do. Today, it is true, the physical frontiers have vanished; but they have been replaced by social and economic frontiers which call for a resourcefulness and a courage as great if not greater than that of the pioneers of an- other day. We are? beginning to realize how hard it is for youth and for the millions of adults who find the gates of industry closed to them, to maintain the dignity and courage which goes with being a man or a woman. But our young people must bear in mind that theirs isn’t the only generation which has faced hard times. It is, naturally, of small comfort to them to be told that hardship and hunger—the never knowing from month to month where the bare necessities of life are going to come from—that such has been the general lot of mankind. It is only recently that any large number of people had the? idea that poverty and misery were not Acts of God but could be eliminated through man’s own efforts, without the sacrifice of the democratic processes of government and of such priceless rights as the freedom and independence of the individual. Page 47 Fortunately, many poeple are fast losing whatever faith they have had in “let things take their course” policy. There is con- siderable evidence that they are slowly but unmistakably coming to the belief that the government has definite responsibilities to- wards maintaining the social and economic well-being of its citizens. Through their votes they are registering themselves in favor of those persons and those policies which hold that some form of governmental action is necessary and that the welfare of the peo- ple is to be put above special privilege and the interests of prop- erty. It is necessary for us to discover ways in which to make indi- viduals financially independent of sickness and old age, of acci- dents and unemployment, and of all the forces which are at present beyond man’s power to control. Some day, undoubtedly, unem- ployment and sickness will be conquered, the appalling number of accidents will be greatly reduced, and even the secret of life itself may be in large measure revealed. And it is entirely possible that the youth whom we are trying to serve today will in turn serve man- kind by bringing these things to pass. Page 48 PARENT EDUCATION AND HOMEMAKING: YOUTH AND PARENT EDUCATION Dr. Edgar B. Schmiedeler Social Action Department, National Catholic Welfare Conference The National Council of Parent Education, perhaps the most authoritative secular group in this field, now includes in its defini- tion of parent education the following three things: Preparation for child care and training, homemaking or the field of home eco- nomics, and marriage and family relationships. When we speak in terms of youth, we must speak in no small measure in terms of ideals. Youth is, and very fortunately so, idealistic. Under proper guidance it readily accepts and follows high ideals. To be sure, without such guidance, youth also readily accepts and follows low ideals. A youth movement based on true idealism is positively a need today. If high ideals are not held up before youth, and that with the vim and verve, the enthusiasm and buoyancy, that appeal to the youth, youth will follow the low ideals of the day, or what is perhaps as bad, it will try blindly to grope its way without the guidance of ideals. The ideal of the Church, insofar as the great majority of man- kind is concerned, is marriage and parenthood. It is true, of course, that the Church recognizes and gives her approval to three normal states of life: marriage; single blessedness in the world; single blessedness in religion. At the same time that we emphasize this general Catholic ideal we should not fail also to call to the attention of youth the specific ideals of genuine Christian marriage. Outstanding among these are certainly the following: Marriage is a divine institution; mar- riage is a sacrament; it is a symbol of the union of Christ and His Church; its prime purpose, in final analysis, is to beget and rear children for an eternity of happiness with God. Certainly, these are genuine ideals! How different from the modern world’s ideals! And how essential that youth will accept and follow them. Christ has placed marriage in the midst of the living power- stream of Christianity, in that stream of grace which circulates between Christ and His Church. He has made it a symbol of the Mystical Body of Christ, a type or picture of the union of Christ and His Church. Christ and the Church are one. Christ is the head of the Church; men and women are the members. Christ is the bridegroom; the Church is the bride. Between Christ and the Church there is the deepest interior fellowship of love and life. The two are one—one body, one spirit, one Christ. Page 49 The prime purpose of marriage is the propagation of the hu- man race, the begetting and rearing of children. It was the wish of the Creator of the human race to use men as His helpers in the propagation of life. But the blessing of children is not completed by merely begetting them. They must be trained. They must be sanctified, be made fit members of the Mystical Body of Christ. And, both by the law of nature and of God, the natural right and the sacred duty to bring this about rests in the first place with the parents. The constructive function of sacramental matrimony and of its consequence, the Christian family, is then also an edu- cative one. It is almost a priestly function. At the moment in which parents bring their child to the baptismal font the founda- tion of the new life in Christ is laid. This is an immensely rich time, the time for the laying of the foundation of religion, from which it is a pleasure for the priest to continue building. Granted a satisfactory remote preparation for marriage in the earliest years of the young man and woman, there is still another all-important preparatory measure, a more proximate one, namely, the selection of a suitable life-partner. Mismating, or failure in the selection of a suitable person is looked upon by many students of the family as one of the more serious evils of the married life of today. A youth movement, wisely and energetically directed, should be able to do not a little to help correct this, and that in the two following ways: by drawing the attention of youth to quali- fications that they should look for in a prospective life-partner, and by providing opportunities for young people of the opposite sex to meet each other and really to get to know each other. The qualifications of a life-partner which should be looked for are good character, both in the sense of good disposition and moral character; domesticity; a reasonable income, and sound health, both mental and physical. Highly important also is the matter of similarities and dissimilarities or differences. A particularly serious matter in this country in connection with the question of dissimilarities is the matter of differences in religions—our un- solved problem of mixed marriage. Quite aside from the whole- some influence that a deeply religious spirit brings into a home circle, similarity of religion exerts an additional power by guar- anteeing sameness of attitude with regard to all the more funda- mental concerns of home life. Sameness of religion makes for similar attitudes towards marriage itself. And this is of the ut- most importance, for the lack of religious agreement so readily leaves a gap that cannot be bridged or it causes a conflict that will not down. Reason and common sense alike testify that where there is a difference in one of the most important matters in life, there is a subtle line of cleavage which should not be present in a Page 50 union that is meant to be the most intimate that human beings can ever contract on this earth, a union of heart and soul, of mind and body, a union of aspirations/ and of prayer. Quite aside from this there is also the matter of safeguarding the faith of the parties themselves and of their prospective children. To provide the opportunity for young people to meet and really learn to know each other, by promoting a social life among youth, preferably on a parish basis, is a highly practical matter in which youth work can be of ai most useful service. There is one more point that must be added : Teach youth to know about and intelligently to fight for the economic and social conditions that are essential to a satisfying and wholesome family life. By this I mean that our young folks should be taught to help along a little in the battle for social justice and for decent community conditions, and not be satisfied with leaving every- thing to the other fellow while their major interests remain cen- tered in having a gay time. Ultimately their own family life will bef greatly influenced by the economic and social conditions of the times. To sum up, I think a Catholic youth program should include the following insofar as parent education, in the limited sense in which we have taken it, is concerned: Youth should be taught the general ideal of the Church that marriage and parenthood for the great majority is the Catholic ideal; they should be taught the following specific ideals regarding Christian marriage; that it is a divine institution, a sacrament, and a symbol of the union of Christ and His Church; that its prime purpose is the begetting and training of children for an eternity of happiness with God. Again youth should be given some notion of what qualifications should be looked for in a life-partner, and should be provided with a social life that will enable him or her to meet and become acquainted with prospective life-partners. Finally youth should be given a fair idea of Catholic principles regarding the economic and social conditions requisite for a satisfactory family life and should be induced to fight for their attainment. A YOUNG WOMAN LOOKS AT MARRIAGE Mrs. James Hayden The teaching of the Catholic Church, if followed in our lives, is, of course, the best possible training for marriage and parent- hood. A husband and wife so trained have paved the way for a really happy, holy marriage no matter what the world’s ideas may Page 51 be as to their success. However, I cannot stress the point too strongly that for thorough happiness in the home, the religious element which comes first must be supplemented by the capable, efficient management of the home and the responsible, sympathetic care of the family by both father and mother. To do one’s job well, one must be trained. If one is intelligent at the outset he recognizes the great need for such training and does his best to obtain it some way or other. It is this consciousness of their need which we must impress upon the youth of today. A girl’s training for marriage and motherhood as a career is necessary. There are certain essentials she should master no mat- ter how many years she has spent in school nor how many years she has been in the business world after school. Certainly, the programs for youth should include preparation for homemaking and parenthood! Every girl should first make an effort to be strong and healthy. Healthy habits, careful eating and plenty of fresh air and exercise should be insisted upon by every mother. Every girl should know how to cook. Many women say that to be a goold cook all you need is a cook book and a few brains! On the contrary, it takes time, energy, practice and imagination to make a skilled cook. Every woman should know how to sew. Whether a little girl has any aptitude for it or not, she should know the rudiments of sewing and mending if she is to be an efficient mother. Every woman should have some knowledge of nursing. It is simple enough toi take a course in First Aid and surely there must be opportunities in our various clinics where one can learn and do some practical nursing if one’s family has been too robust to be practised upon. Every girl should have a knowledge of business transactions, of banking methods through her own bank account, and she should be friends with a budget for she will be happy later if she knows how to use one. The Catholic Church is very wise when it admonishes its chil- dren to marry Catholics. One’s faith is the heart and soul of one’s life and when two people are not in accord on anything so vital, that oneness of spirit which marriage means is incomplete. Should a girl want to start married life, which is certain to bring its problems and its sorrows and where husband and wife should think alike on most vital subjects, with such a handicap? After a Catholic man and woman are married a great deal of the success of their marriage and their mutual happiness depends upon their treatment of each other. Courtesy and respect, de- Page 52 ference to each other’s wishes, comradeship and congeniality and a high regard for the other’s comfort and happiness are only less essential than honesty. If you are honest you do your job to the best of your ability. You fulfill your duties to God, your husband or wife and your family. The honest husband is straightforward, dependable, one in whom you can place implicit trust. He is honest in his work and in his amusements. He is honest with his wife in giving her her share of his time and his earnings. He realizes that she is earning money indirectly in her care of his home and that she should have free time as well as he. The honest wife shoulders the responsibility of running the home efficiently, of taking proper care of her children. She is honest in her accounts, and she takes advantage of her leisure to keep her mind active and attuned to what is going on in the world around her. She has recourse to common sense, intelligence, pa- tience and prayer. The Church teaches that the primary purpose of marriage is the continuation of God’s work of creation. When a couple is singled out to be the parents of God’s little ones, they should greet this privilege with joy and anticipation, optimism and courage. They say that every baby brings its own loaf of bread with it, and it seems to be the case. At all events, in addition to the care and anxiety he causes, each one certainly brings to his family an incalculable amount of gladness, pleasure and fun. To deal judi- ciously and lovingly with children you need all the logic, psy- chology, common sense and sympathy you can summon. And when you have learned all these things through experience it is a shame to waste it all on one child. The ideal should be healthy children in a happy Christian home. Laughter and Christianity, purity and wholesomeness go together. With the Catholic philosophy of marriage and the proper Catholic training for homemaking, the happiness of the home and of the youth of the future is assured. A YOUNG MAN LOOKS AT MARRIAGE By Dr. John J. O’Connor When a young man looks at homemaking, he knows it is un- doubtedly true that the teachings of the Catholic Church, if fol- lowed in our lives, are the best possible training for courtship, marriage and parenthood. It is likewise true that today our faith is receiving the acid test in a topsy-turvy, pagan world. Marriage, under existing abnormal conditions, demands extraor- Page 53 dinary courage. Our young people must not be blamed if they hesitate to embark upon such an exceedingly perilous course ; but they must be severely criticized for permitting the disciples of anti-Christ to dictate the standards of morality in this republic, to violate every fundamental principle of Social Justice with im- punity, to sabotage practically every constructive Christian re- form. Why are we standing idle in the mlarket place? Why are we twiddling our thumbs in the vineyard of the Lord? Why are we, custodians of a great culture, bewildered, discouraged and dis- consolate? Why are we timid and faltering when there are bat- tles to be fought and new worlds to conquer for Christ? An ounce of Catholic Action is worth a pound of talk. We must not only be hearers of the Word but the doers thereof. It is not enough to pass a lengthy resolution against birth-control and then go home and forget about it. It is not enough to read the papal encyclicals and then trust to luck that some employer will pay his employees a family living wage. Catholic youth must plan and execute a World Social Reform by meeting the economic situation of the day along religious lines. We must strive to increase our own personal sanctification. We must begin to practice what we preach. We must not only talk but act. Youth must play an increasingly active part in reconstructing the social order. If youth shirks this grave responsibility of re- storing order and common sense in this mad, chaotic world, our civilization is doomed and our young people, in the years to come, will be married by a Communist parson, live in one room in a collectivist lodging house, sing the Third International for break- fast, goose step for lunch, practice trench warfare for dinner, and bear children for future world massacres. The problem of marriage and homemaking, as I see it, is in- exorably bound up with the present state of our civilization. How can any young man hope for a normal, healthy married life when the law of the jungle and the brothel prevails in our economic and social relationships? I do not wish to be unduly pessimistic, but I am of the opinion that youth, should face the facts as they exist today. In- tensive Catholic Action is the only antidote to the tragedy of postponed marriages. Youth must take its destiny in its own hands. Youth must, with God’s help, fashion a brave new world in which justice and charity shall prevail and where young peo- ple can, without too many heart-breaking obstacles and difficul- ties, achieve their heart’s desire—a Catholic home. Page 54 EDUCATION FOR HOMEMAKING Clara V. Bradley Department of Home Economics, National Catholic School of Social Service Homemaking is not a new occupation, nor is education for this vocation new. Socrates is reported by Xenophon as discussing the importance of the management of the household with a young Greek. In fact the word “economics” comes from a compound Greek term meaning “management of household property.” Its modern connotation has evolved through the centuries. As long ago as 1523 a young Spaniard, Juan Vives, considered the subject serious enough to include several chapters in his book, “The In- struction of the Christian Woman.” He insisted that the train- ing must be early, comprehensive and thorough. Great social movements in the last hundred years have changed the home and homemaking to an amazing extent. These are inventions and dis- covery with resultant industrial expansion, the dramatic settling of the west, the growth of democracy and the decline of religious influence. Throughout pre-industrial days and on the frontier, home pro- duction was general. Practically everything consumed by the family was made by the members of the household. But with the industrial revolution, the influences of immigration and the settling of the west, mechanical and social inventions brought about radical changes. Education has been profoundly affected. A vast body of knowledge has accumulated. It is impossible for one person to get it all in one lifetime, so we have specialists in the fields of education, of medicine, in fact in all the large spheres of life. These have resulted in sweeping economic changes, and changes in method. One of the effects has been mass education, fed in some part with an indigestible curriculum. With the development of the factory system, the expansion of the west and the growth of democracy, there had been a gradual decline of the influence of organized religion. The breaking down of family ties by the westward movement, the independence of woman, and the fact that education was secularized were ex- ceedingly important in weakening the influence of religion. Gradually a changed attitude on the teaching of religion in the home, on the integrity of the marriage bond, on the size of the family, became apparent. The influence of the Catholic Church has been much stronger because of its continued insistence on the insolubility of marriage, the evil of birth control, and the need for religious education of the young. American life has been most Page 55 profoundly influenced by Protestantism. The economic inde- pendence of women has been followed by a rise in the divorce rate and a lowering in the birth rate. In a word, the spiritual tradition has given way before the material tradition. In the tangled skein which we call modern American life, four main threads—invention and discovery, the westward move- ment, the growth of democracy, and the decline of religious in- fluence—can be discerned. These are twisted, tangled, and inter- mingled to give innumerable new effects ; but the thickest, strong- est thread is that of invention. Thus it is that while invention has brought conveniences, comforts, beauty and culture, it has brought innumerable problems of economic insecurity of health, and of housing. It has given rise to a new rugged material cul- ture, but the non-material culture of religion, morals, culture, tra- ditions and customs has been badly shaken. The following are some of the outstanding changes that have taken place: 1 . There has been a change in economic security. Practically every worker is dependent on a money income, that is, on earning a living, whereas, on the frontier, the family made a living. They produced practically everything they required and had little need for money. Today even the farmer must have some cash income as so much of the goods he needs must be bought with money. Both workers and farmers are largely unorganized so have little bargaining power over their income. 2. Production has been passing from the home for nearly a century. The production of major goods as furniture, textiles and tools went first. Those concerned with the business of liv- ing—canning, baking, cleaning and recreation—went next. Still in certain sections of the country, not all of the production has gone from the home. 3. As the family has become less of a production unit, it has become more of a consumptive unit. Invention and discovery have given it a multiplicity of new products and with them a complexity of new problems. Next in importance to earning a money income is its expenditures, because the family’s standard of living depends in great amount on these two factors. Because of unintelligent spending of the hard-earned income, the standard of living is raised little, if any, and there is rarely a margin of savings even on an adequate income. 4. There has been a change in the physical basis of the home. (a) The size of the home itself has been shrinking for the past fifty years. In the cities high rent, overcrowding, lack of privacy and the taking over of activities of the home by outside agencies have been the result. The home is no longer a sign of achieve- Page 56 ment. The family moves frequently and so neighbors are not important to it, either for neighborliness or for their good opinion. (b) The size and type of the household has changed. In the pre-industrial agricultural area, children were assets. In these days of economic insecurity they are considered liabilities. 5. New problems are growing out of old functions and new functions are developing. The discovery of scientific information has increased the responsibility of homemaking, particularly in the care and rearing of children and the feeding of the family. New psychology has made the development of personality and family relationships extremely important. Much of the drudgery has been taken from homemaking. The educational tempo must be stepped up too if the family is to be adjusted to this new en- vironment. This adjustment should mean a more abundant and gracious life even though the worker must continue to earn a liv- ing because the environment offers this possibility. This objective can be effected only through education. This requires a broad conception of education. Homemaking educa- tion is indeed a field, not a subject. It is a field in which each member of the family must be trained because successful home- making is a cooperative undertaking. The family in the pre- industrial days was a cooperative unit. It must again become a co- operative unit although on another basis. The main reason why homemaking education has not made itself felt as much as it should have is that it has been an academic subject for so many credits given only to girls on different levels of the curriculum. Then, too, homemaking itself has been considered the responsi- bility solely of the adult married woman. It is quite true that the mother because of her interest and influence and abilities would continue to be the official homemaker and while it should be the job of the father to support his wife and children to the best of his ability, a home consists of much more than food, clothing, and shelter. It must have love and understanding between the vari- ous members of the family as well. Boys and girls, men and women, should be trained to consider homemaking a cooperative project for the whole family if the home is to fit into the modern environment and maintain a satisfying life for all of its members. The training should be secured both by formal schooling on various curriculum levels and by adult education by lectures, dis- cussion groups, reading or by enrollment in classes. Three of the phases of homemaking should be intelligently understood by each member according to his, age or ability. One of these is economic problems as they affect the family—tariff, price-fixing, living wage, encyclicals, taxation, cost of living, the planning and ad- ministration of the family budget and problems of consumer Page 57 buying. A second field is the problem of family relationships. Each person should know enough practical psychology to analyze and understand himself and his relation to the other members of the family group and to analyze the home situation. Only where there is ignorance is there misunderstanding and even hostility. Understanding gives tolerance and strengthens affectional bonds. Religion will teach charity and forbearance as well as self-restraint and unselfishness and will complement the work in family re- lationships. Since housekeeping is still an important part of homemaking it is essential that the women in the family should consider good food selection; good cooking; neat sewing and mending; clean beds, floors, and clothes; artistic rooms; intelligent care of the sick; and getting money’s worth for each expenditure; take pride in high standards for work and instead of considering it drudgery, as the untrained often do, to consider it the fulfillment of one’s obligation in a worth while cooperative enterprise. The reward will be the real satisfaction, that comes from doing a piece of creative work whether it be a glass of perfect jelly, a well- cooked, well-served meal, a well-made bed, a rack of beautifully ironed clothes, a balanced budget, or a case of canned goods bought at a real bargain. Not a littlei of this satisfaction comes from the realization that the achievement is her contribution to the co- operative venture in homemaking because she can do it better and with the most satisfaction to the other members of the group. This is a professional attitude toward a career. The ideals, then, for homemaking education that would help to adjust the family to the modern environment are: 1. That homemaking be considered a cooperative enterprise for all members of the family. 2. A thorough grounding in religion as a basis in the enter- prise. 3. The understanding of family relationship problems and the many phases of the economic problems which affect the home. 4. Appreciation of the importance of housekeeping and house- hold production and adequate training for them. How shall these ideals be realized? By formal education and by providing means for adult educa- tion for men and women, and their utilization encouraged. YOUTH’S ATTITUDE TOWARD HOMEMAKING Mrs. James F. Ryan Since God, in the beginning, as the final gesture of His great act of Creation, made woman and placed her in a divinely con- stituted partnership with man, homemaking has been her great vocation. Centuries later he sent another woman and her Divine Son blessed a human home with His sweet presence, gave to a man and a woman about to begin homemaking the special blessing of His first miracle, and reestablished the home on the firm founda- tion of sacramental grace and dignity. Now we all know, of course, that we are living in anything but normal times and that our young people looking towards matri- mony face exceptional economic problems. The normal desires of the human heart continue, but: How can we marry?—they wonder. The pagan philosophy which vitiates our social atmos- phere attempts to offer them substitutes, against which ideas our Holy Father so explicitly warns us in his powerful encyclical, and tells us that they are laid as snares for the young. Every force and energy in our power must be exerted to prevent any compro- mise with these. The issue of the Christian home is at stake—the problem is tremendous. Perhaps we need a certain adjustment of our sense of values, and a realization that greater simplicity in our lives need not necessarily mean a lowering of our standards. But certainly if homemaking today presents these added problems and sacrifices—all the more is training and preparation—the de- velopment of right attitudes—necessary that we may not waste our resources, material or spiritual, but use them to their finest realization. You, counselors of youth, have a wonderful opportunity to hold high before these young people the standards of the Catholic home,—the ideals of Catholic marriage and parenthood. You have such fertile soil to work on. These young people come to you voluntarily in their leisure time, seeking recreation and happi- ness, and are in a mood for confidences. The adolescent girl has a God-given right to look forward to marriage and the establishment of her own home. This aspira- tion must of course be guided. It must be tempered by self-con- trol and by a sane realization of the necessity of proper maturity and preparation. But this aspiration in itself must not be scorned, laughed at or discouraged. Leaders of youth groups can fill a very great need in many a young girl’s life—for both home and school sometimes fail her in understanding and helpfulness in her marital hopes and interests. Page 59 Marriage has many elements of uncertainty. Even the best pre- pared couple do not thoroughly understand how the other will be as husband or wife until after marriage. There is no novitiate in marriage. Our young people must expect to make sacrifices, but they have a right—yes, a duty—to trust in Him who blessed marriage so bountifully and to budget their worries and difficulties on the graces of the sacrament. In our schools have we perhaps been over-stressing the busi- ness and professional motive in the training of our young women? Have we not developed somewhat of an intellectual sneer for the necessary and beautiful arts of the home? We all know that to be a real wife and mother one should have breadth of knowledge, quickness of wit, keenness of mind, sound judgment, facility of hand, sympathy of heart and greatness of soul. The demands and possibilities are such as to challenge the finest intellects and highest enthusiasms of the best of our young women. Not a small part of our economic distress and disturbance has been caused by the competition of women in business and professional fields and her consequent loss to the home. The adult labor supply has been disproportionately increased as, by the same circumstances, the relative normal consumption has been lessened. It may be old-fashioned to say that “woman’s place is in the home” but unless she be there—where is the home? As Ruskin has so beautifully expressed it: “Wherever a true wife comes, home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head ; the glowworms in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot—but home is yet wherever she is ; and for a noble woman it stretches far round her, better than ceiled with cedar or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, for those who else were homeless.” It is in matters of the spirit that women must especially be the leaders. True spirituality is a woman’s sweetest charm and great- est source of power. The home may function with a sickly mother—even one not mentally equipped may somehow carry on —but if her moral and emotional sense and her spiritual attitude is not right, the family life is built on a precarious quicksand foundation. Homemaking is serious business it is true, but there is in it a lifetime of joy and satisfaction. The wife and mother needs a true spirit of prayer with childlike faith and confidence in Divine response. If youth has the right attitude toward home- making, they realize that in the homes they build here, their great work is preparing souls for the home of the Father, thus engaging in Heavenly Homemaking. Page 60 PARENT EDUCATION IN A STATE SET-UP Mrs. Agnes O’Connor State Supervisor of Parent Education, New Jersey Rapid social change causes unrest. Civilization is like a river, which flows on, its sources lost in the dim past, its future course beyond the knowledge of man. Sometimes it flows quietly for a long time between level changes of scenery. At others it flows irregularly, it boils over ledges, the banks of the river are wild and rocky, the scene changes rapidly. Like the river in its fury, civilization has entered a period of rapid and turbulent change; like the river its movement is un- balanced and irregular. As the forces of government seek to control the rebellious waters, so too they must try to ameliorate social conditions in times of stress. A group seeking to study youth with its problems and its re- sponsibilities may well take cognizance of the various activities initiated by the government, whether Federal, State or Municipal, touching any phase of the problem. Parent Education, as included in the emergency program, may well challenge our attention in this regard. The breakdown of family life is due in large part to lack of training for parenthood. Therefore, a program for parent education would be justified un- der any conditions. But emergency conditions made possible plans which would have been hard to carry out in normal times. The program as planned made possible the employment of a large number of unemployed teachers. Early in the depression, the need for special educational activities in the home and family was revealed. To meet these conditions, the parent-education program was developed. Interest was aroused by the holding of Institutes, which awakened groups and individuals to their needs, stimulated them to action, and created a demand for sys- tematic study. Each State is responsible for planning its own program. The State set-up in New Jersey, with which I am associated, includes rural, suburban, resort city, and industrial city programs. While the various programs were planned to meet the specific needs of those who availed themselves of the opportunity, the purpose of the work is to teach something of the art of living, training in thinking, learning by doing. Rural programs include a strong music program ; vocal and instrumental talent has been discovered and encouraged. Play groups for children are planned while the mothers study. Page 61 Two or more mothers take turns observing the children and dis- cussing observations at the next meeting. The reading of the children is studied. Maladjusted children are noted and informal conferences with teachers and nurses ar- ranged. A forum on prevention of delinquency was an outgrowth of the work. Ten meetings were held and it is hoped that a child study bureau where parents may go for advice will be formed. You may ask how this plan is tied up with the youth program. The youth program is planned for young men and women between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five; how many of this group are already parents, eager to give to their children, the youth of to- morrow, the advantages and opportunities of which they have been deprived. To the many for whom marriage has been post- poned because of economic need, the possibilities and responsibili- ties of parenthood are even more essential. CATHOLIC MATERNITY GUILDS Mrs. Mary Filser Lohr National President , National Catholic Women's Union Feeling it is our duty as Catholic women to safeguard and protect our family life and to encourage young people who are to be united in chaste wedlock through the Sacrament of Marriage, and stimulated by the Encyclical of Pius XI on Christian Mar- riage, a Committee was appointed at the national convention of the Central Verein to carefully study this question. The follow- ing year, a plan originated and formulated by Rev. Joseph J. Schagemann, C.SS.R., was presented to the National Catholic Women’s Union. This plan provided for the organization of Ma- ternity Guilds throughout the country. The Guild plan has two objectives: (1) to provide material assistance to people with moderate incomes and to the poor, if funds permit, that they may be able to fulfill their parental duties in accordance with God’s law; (2) to educate young men and women to a proper under- standing and appreciation of the nobility of parenthood and the dignity of motherhood, the one great aim being to bring about a close union of all members in the Mystical Body of Christ. The Guild makes it possible to provide proper care on the basis of dues paid by the members. Catholic Maternity Guilds may be started in any parish or by any group of Catholic lay men or women, provided they first obtain the permission of the Or- dinary of the Diocese. The Guild serves both rural and city areas. It may be organized in a parish or local community and can offer hospitalization or home care. It has been successfully established in Texas, Missouri, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Wis- consin. Connecticut, Ohio and Minnesota are under way planning and making preparation to organize. The major object of the Guild is to help people to help them- selves. In many cases, Guilds have been started through the es- tablishment of Study Clubs. This makes it possible to develop the further purpose of the Guild, which is to promulgate the spirit of Christian charity. Lectures! of religious and educational value are arranged at the monthly meetings. Books on and discussions on hygiene and infant care are introduced. Volunteer aid to mothers and care of children in the homes is highly recommended. Recently, His Excellency, Archbishop Stritch, Spiritual Moderator of the Catholic Women’s Union, addressing a large group of Cath- olic women in his Diocese, urging the great necessity of such Guilds, commissioned them to make this their contribution to Catholic Action. We know that marriage springs from love—sacred love, which must be holy and kept holy to be worthy of the name; it must originate from God for God is love. Anything which will safeguard the sanctity of this relationship contributes not only to the wel- fare of the youth of today, but gives promise of a new idealism to the youth of the future. St. Gerard Magella is the patron saint of the Guild. Page 63 SPIRITUAL ACTIVITIES: SPIRITUAL VALUE OF A YOUTH PROGRAM Rev. Francis P. LeBuffe, S .J. Eastern Representative, Sodality of Our Lady The most important thing for us to keep 'in mind when we are dealing with young people is that we must be conversant with their problems and sympathetic with their endeavors to solve these problems. Once young people realize that a speaker is their friend, it is possible for him literally to do anything he likes with them. They will listen to his words, they will seek his advice because they feel that he has a practical outlook. To attain this outlook, we of the older generation must realize that the new generation is different, decidedly different. But we must not add “and, therefore, bad.” I should prefer to put it: “different and, therefore, good.” I am quite convinced that the new generation is more positively good than the boys and the girls of my own time. We were negatively good. That is, we did not do things that were seriously wrong. We were helped to this avoidance of serious wrong-doing by the fact that we lived in a socially healthy atmosphere. Men and women at large still held to Christian ideals and to do serious wrong made one a social outcast. The boys and girls of today are not helped by any such socially healthy atmosphere. Just the opposite. The atmosphere of the world at, large today is morally unhealthy and all the old standards are openly attacked, if not repudiated. Hence, if a boy or girl is good today, he or she is good out of conviction. They are not carried along by the tide, but are swimming against stream. Moreover, my experience with young people has proved to me that they are more positively good than our generation. That is, they do more positive good things than we did. I have been pres- ent at Sodality Conventions of High School and College students and have been much impressed with the story of all they were doing and wanted to do for God. Time and time again I have met young people at the Summer Schools of Catholic Action and have listened to them recount the work of the year of their respective Sodalities. All kinds of projects have been formulated and all kinds of good work done. What these young people need is, therefore, sympathetic, con- structive leadership. It is that kind of leadership that we have been trying to give them through the Sodality. Under the leader- ship of Rev. Daniel A. Lord, S.J., and his associates of the Queen’s Work, the Sodality has been vivified and made a strong vehicle Page 64 of Catholic Action. We advise that the Sodality be formed on a four-committee plan: the Eucharistic, Our Lady’s, Apostolic and Catholic Literature. When these committees function properly, the sodality does remarkable work. Another phenomenon of our young people is their manifest desire to deepen their spiritual lives. Much constructive work has been done along this line for the sodalities. The most potent means that can be offered to young people to deepen their spiritual lives is the use of mental prayer. It is quite surprising how eagerly even High School students will form the practice of men- tal prayer, if it be explained to them in simple terms and if they are advised to begin with a period of three or five minutes only a day. It has been my experience as I journeyed about the country, to be asked eagerly by the students themselves to explain mental prayer to them and to make brief meditations with them in the Chapel. Part of the monthly service that Father Lord sends out to the Sodalities is a brief meditation for their use. All in all, I think we have reason to be satisfied with the younger generation and certainly we shall get nowhere by lectur- ing and condemning them. Once again, a sympathetic, construc- tive attitude will help them and will help us in guiding them properly. LITURGY Rev. Michael Ducey, O.S.B. Prior, St. Anselm’s Priory, Washington, D. C. The| liturgy of the Catholic Church is peculiarly well adapted to youthful minds as an inspiration and educational factor, be- cause of its marvelous array of devices which stir the heart and at the same time instruct the mind. Its character as supernatural pageantry, its use of light color, sound, symbolic word and act in- culcate its lessonsi in so solemn and impressive a fashion that it is also true that unless we get behind and beneath its external shell, we are apt to miss its chief and most valuable contribution to our spiritual lives. Actio sequitur esse; action follows upon being, action depends on principle, say the philosophers, and this is eminently true of the greatest ACTION of all, the Liturgy and its chief focus in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. What is the chief principle, or principles, which underlie all liturgical activity, and preeminently the action of the Mass? Two fundamental ones suggest themselves at once, and since they are in special harmony with the principles of social action, they are fruitful topics for further discussion and application. For these Page 65 two principles explain the SOCIAL character of the liturgy, of Holy Mass. The Mass we know is a SOCIAL act of the highest possible dignity, since it is a sacrifice offered not by individuals, not even by Christ, our Lord, as an individual, but by the whole Church, by Christ its Head, and all its baptized members. This happens because the Mass is the act, the most perfect act, performed by that mysterious entity, so extolled in the Epistles of St. Paul, which we call the Mystic Body of Christ. This fundamental doctrine of our Catholic Faith means that there exists, in the supernatural order, a Body, a true Organism composed of all redeemed souls. They have been fused together by the power of baptismal grace, of (divine redemption, into a vast single whole, a grand amalgam of many into one, existing for the purpose of eternally praising God with Christ, His Divine Son, and of becoming more and more like Christ, more and more perfect in resemblance to the Head which is the great requisite for their eternal happiness and salva- tion. This doctrine of the Mystic Body is what makes the Church a social unit, a social organism (which means much more than an organization) par excellence. Secondly, it proves that our salva- tion, both as individuals and as a group, is less the work of the in- vidual members than of the whole, or rather, more of the Head from Whom comes life and strength which enable the members of the Body to >grow and increase. In an age of excessive indi- vidualism, it is not individualistic, and there it is necessary to recall and take comfort in this basic truth taught us by the Liturgy. Wd save ourselves, we go to Heaven, not as so many individuals, but as a united group in which the virtues as well as the sins of all have an effect upon the whole Body. If we never lose sight of the fact that our overcoming of sin and temptation, or practice of virtue depends chiefly upon the power of divine grace, upon the perfection of our union with Christ and with one another by charity, then the problem of saving our souls and of helping others to save theirs becomes a vastly simpler one. If you endeavor, in your efforts to work for the good of so- ciety, in whatever sphere you feel called upon to work, to keep these principles in mind, there is no doubt that success will crown your efforts. They are principles as simple as they are venerable. CATHOLIC ACTION, SOCIAL ACTION, in the highest and deepest sense, is nothing else than the Liturgy of the Catholic Church. There you have set down before you, in intelligible and attractive form, the model upon which you must work if you are to achieve a good and lasting result. The doctrine of the Mystic Page 66 Body of Christ, the principle that divine grace is the supreme de- termining factor in the leavening of human society and in the up- lifting of its individual members to the high place of supernatural living, these are the truths which Liturgy is shot through with, and which will become the more vivid and inspiring to you, the more you familiarize yourself in thought and practical action with the various spheres of liturgical action ... all of which, be it remem- bered, derive from, depend on, lead in one way or another to the great representing of Christ’s Redemptive work in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. OUR SODALITY Miss Louise Yingling Washington Sodality Union Our Sodality has just completed its fourth year. The Com- mittee system has kept alive the interest and has given each girl an opportunity to participate in the program, for example: The Eucharistic Committee: The aim of this Committee is to further devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. Practices—General : New members upon entering the Sodality take the pledge of Handmaids of the Blessed Sacrament. They promise to receive Holy Communion weekly and to induce others to do so. Fidelity to the First Friday Communion of Reparation is rewarded by a badge of honor and the Eucharistic pin. The Committee members not only join in the above prac- tices but, by example, and by request, see that this spirit of devotion never lags. Our Lady’s Committee: This Committee prepares and presents programs in honor of Our Lady: Playettes. May, October and December are active months for the mem- bers of this Committee. Literature Committee: The aim is to recommend and choose wholesome reading for the School Library. To prepare reviews of certain very desirable books of interest to young girls. Page 67 The high points of Queen’s Work pamphlets are presented at the monthly meeting. Activities Committee: This Committee reports all parish activities, and supplies in- formation on feasts of the Church, special ceremonies, etc. Publicity Committee: The work of this Committee consists in making the Bulletin Board an attraction. Posters and even prepared articles and clippings are kept be- fore the members. These are changed frequently to prevent their becoming stale. THE CAMPIONS Elizabeth Walsh Sectional Organizer of Campions, Washington, D. C. “By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love one for another.” These were the words of Our Lord at the Last Supper. The early Christians carried them out so faith- fully that the pagans marveled and said, “See how they love each other.” Today we are a long way from the social ideals of the early Christians. Sociologists are looking back to them for in- spiration because it is realized that these early Christian com- munities were ideal social groups. They were ideal because they were characterized by fraternal charity. There was no class or race hatred; Jews, Gentiles, bond and free mingled together har- moniously. There was no economic distress because they shared what they had with each other and “no one was needy among them.” What a contrast to the early Christian communities the modern world presents. Fraternal charity has been stifled by individual- ism. We live in a highly competitive civilization which glorifies selfishness. The man who can push forward with unscrupulous disregard for the rights of others is accounted a success. The spirit of selfishness and individualism has led to many social problems. Class war, nationalistic war, race hatred, greed, wor- ship of money, oppression of the poor, are all characteristics of contemporary society, and they have their basis in hate rather than fraternal love. A new Catholic social movement has recently sprung up which seeks to revive the fraternal charity of the early Christians in present-day society, and to renew the vivid faith in the words of Our Lord which made their social philosophy possible. This new Social Catholicism emphasises the fact that there can be no true Page 68 solution to the social problems of our time except one that is based on an aroused and aggressive Christianity. Little groups of people are uniting in different places for the purpose of ex- pressing these ideals and trying to live up to them. The princi- ples of the movement are also expressed in such periodicals as The Colosseum in England, UEsprit in France, and in the paper, The Catholic Worker, in this country. The Catholic Worker is a small monthly paper which espouses the cause of the man of the street, of the poorest workers, and of the unemployed. It is edited by a group of Catholic lay people working with ecclesiastical approval, stressing the principle of Voluntary Poverty as a social ideal which makes a frontal attack on the selfish money-loving spirit of the times. They also urge the personal practice of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The Campion Propaganda Committee had its origin at The Catholic Worker headquarters in New York City. The first Cam- pions were boys and girls who helped distribute the paper and picketed on social questions. The name of the group comes from the Jesuit martyr, Edmund Campion, who lived in Elizabethan times and gave his life for the faith. The Campions, therefore, is a youth organization, having as its purpose the spreading of the social teachings of the Church and the putting of these teachings into actual practice. Membership is open to all Catholic youth of good will, anxious to work and to learn and to embrace a program of Prayer, Action and Sacrifice. Since Liturgical prayer is the social prayer par excellence, great emphasis is placed on participation in the Liturgy of the Church as a mean^ of obtaining Grace to carry on our work, and as a means of binding the members of the group together more closely. There- fore there is a Liturgical Choir, and Liturgical Days are sponsored during the year. On these days the Campions take part in a Missa Cantata, and recite Compline and Vespers. Compline is sung at all meetings. By means of these activities devotion to the Liturgy is spread among members and also in the community. The form of action most often emphasized is that of social propaganda. The Campions sell The Catholic Worker at their parish churches on Sundays before and after Mass. Some mem- bers give talks, illustrate cards and posters, present plays, and guest speakers on religious and social questions are invited to the meetings. The final aspect of the program is emphasis on the principle of personal sacrifice. Every Campion is urged to make some per- sonal contribution to the (cause, whether it be that of time, hard work, or material assistance. The principle of sacrifice is an im- Page 69 portant one and by emphasizing it the most idealistic people are gained as members. A small group of people inspired with idealistic principles can accomplish an amount of work altogether out of proportion to the size of the group, and in so doing can obtain for themselves a true appreciation of the meaning of Chris- tian joy. THE CATHOLIC EVIDENCE GUILD FOR JUNIORS * Eleanor Crowley Junior Evidence Guild , Washington , D. C. The Catholic Evidence Guild is a particularly appropriate activity for young Catholic women wishing to engage in Catholic Action. .For the Guild affords spiritual activity and intellectual growth in the truths of religion, with opportunity for making these truths of the Catholic Church known to others. As the aim of the Catholic Evidence Guild is to explain Cath- olic doctrine to the “man in the street,” who lacks the privilege of knowing it through the ordinary channels, the Guild’s program is threefold: training speakers for street and park speaking, spiritual exercises for the success of the work, and actual street work. Auxiliary activities will be determined by local needs. In preparation for street speaking, prospective Guild speakers must go through a Junior and a Senior training class. For even the well-instructed Catholic does not know his religion clearly and deeply enough to explain it accurately to others. Moreover the speaker who has a splendid Catholic background is often de- cidedly lacking in understanding of the non-Catholic’s way of thinking or the non-Catholic’s way of expressing himself in re- ligious terms. Initial problems are: 1. Finding a suitable place to meet. 2. Obtaining the help of an enthusiastic Moderator familiar with the guild idea, who will secure the approval of the Bishop of the diocese. 3. Assembling a group of young men and women who will meet regularly for training, and read and study during the week. The “Catholic Evidence Guild Training Outlines,” published by Sheed & Ward, are usually followed. They outline procedure based on long experience and group doctrinal topics to suit the ability of Junior and Senior speakers. When a Junior can pass an examination given by a Board Page 70 named by the Bishop, he receives a license permitting him to speak upon that particular subject. As he gradually qualifies in new subjects, he becomes eligible to speak on them also. When he has completed the Junior course of lessons, he automatically begins the Senior subjects which are of a more difficult and controversial nature. Senior speakers with many subjects and adequate experi- ence in public work become Chairmen, which office permits them to supervise an outdoor meeting and answer any difficulties that arise. Essential to preparation for public speaking are spiritual exer- cises, both for the individual and for the group. Corporate at- tendance at Mass and Holy Communion once a month; assigned hours for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament during the year; a weekly record of spiritual offerings for the success of the Guild work, submitted by each individual, are usual. Most interesting and vital is the work in the streets and public parks. A typical “pitch” or outdoor meeting is conducted in this manner. The Guild officers obtain from the city or national au- thorities a permit to speak at a certain place and at a certain time. A chairman and three or four speakers are assigned to that “pitch.” A wooden platform bearing the name, “Catholic Evidence Guild,” is placed in the assigned place, and the “pitch” begins regardless of whether or not an audience has formed. The first speaker ex- plains the purpose of the talks, and then gives a twenty-minute talk on one of his subjects. At the end of his talk, or during it, if necessary, he answers any objections stated by members of the crowd. Any question he cannot answer or which is not con- cerned with his particular subject, he refers to the Chairman or promises to answer it personally at the next meeting. When there are no more questions on his topic, the next speaker continues the meeting with another subject. The crowd usually consists of men and women passing through the park who stop to listen, and a certain number of men who spend most of their time in the parks and on the park benches. The Guild has met with very little unpleasant opposition. The meetings have been conducted with dignity and good feeling be- tween speaker and audience, some people returning from Sunday to Sunday to hear the talks. It is impossible to record or even estimate results in this work. It is significant, however, that several fallen-away Catholics and interested non-Catholics have made contacts with parish priests through Guild members. At present there are “Catholic Evidence Guilds” organized in New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, De- Page 71 troit, Buffalo and Oklahoma. A group at Trinity College coached by a laywoman in the Washington Evidence Guild, has already licensed several members who can carry the work back to their own cities. I suggest that you carry back this very worth while activity to your dioceses as an inspiration in your youth program and an out- let for youth enthusiasm. Further information may be obtained from the Catholic Evidence Bureau of the National Catholic Wel- fare Conference. WHAT THE MISSION CRUSADE MEANS TO THE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT Mary Ann Fugitt Immaculate Conception School, Washington, D. C. It is generally agreed by older generations that the youth of High School age is irresponsible, carefree, and thoughtless. They smile indulgently at our madcap foolishness and no doubt would be quite surprised to learn that we do have serious voluntary in- terests in our religion. We do indeed have rather frequent moments of serious think- ing about the things that are not of this world. The well-known proof of our claim is the ever-growing Catholic Students’ Mission Crusade. As you all know, the spiritual and material help af- forded by this organization has meant much to the furtherance of the work of the home and foreign missionaries. But it has meant no less to the High School student. For him, this Crusade constitutes a vital, living, -active part of religion, so dear to eager young hearts. He is doing Christ’s bidding: “Go forth, and teach all nations”; not only listening to it, from the altar steps. The Mission Crusade has united stu- dent and religion into a human, living, practical thing. After working with his fellow Crusaders, the student arrives at a better understanding of the Church’s system of missions, and how it heroically fights “darkness with light.” No longer is the Church a hazy, idealistic picture, but an actual reality, in which he himself is taking a large part. He comes to understand why the Church has thrived these many centuries; he grows to know and love it more; he makes out of his own self-denial, a considerable contribution to the support of the missions. In laboring for the missionaries, he cannot fail to hear and learn about martyrs to the cause of Christ, and others who have given, their lives for the greater glory of God. He cannot fail to Page 72 admire such Christlike and heroic characters. From such ad- miration, it is only to be concluded that he desires to imitate their virtues. There is another aspect to participation in the Mission Cru- sade. In recent years, the oratorical contest movement has had a twofold important effect on the High School student. First it initiates on the part of the hundreds of students who actually participate in preliminary contests a comprehensive study of cur- rent vital topics, as the 300th anniversary of the founding of Mary- land, which caused the Catholic High Schools of the diocese to seek out the glory of Maryland, that Catholic colony whose tolerance resulted in the Bill of Rights—granting freedom of religion, speech, and the press to Americans. The Mexican question the following year revealed to the Cru- saders the truth of a situation that had been concealed or distorted by the daily press. Most recently Communism was chosen as the subject for the contest. Besides the knowledge of current problems gained through the annual contest, another benefit has accrued to the Catholic stu- dents. The training received by every one participating in it has been of inestimable value to both the student and the Church. The ability to address a gathering will mean much to his future position as an American and as a Catholic. The Catholic Students’ Mission Crusade has also served to introduce Catholic students to other Catholic students. Busy with his own social functions, he need not look elsewhere for recreation. He does not need to go to any trouble to find friends of his own age. He learns to appreciate the social life of the higher Catholic standard. The friendly rivalry which this exceptional organization pro- motes causes each student to put forth his best efforts. He has learned to smile in defeat, and to be humble when victorious. Thus a splendid esprit de corpi is developed. The common ends of the crusade result in unity of purpose and concerted action. Having learned to work well together as students, may we not later on work well together as Catholic men and women? There is an old adage that says, “As the twig is bent, so the tree will grow.” Under the influence of Crusade activities, we have learned how full of meaning, how worth while, our lives can become. In the future, may our youthful promise reflect honor on our training as Mission Crusaders. Page 73 CULTURAL ACTIVITIES: TECHNIQUE OF THE DISCUSSION STUDY CLUB Mrs. Frank O’Hara Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, National Catholic Welfare Conference Some people like to study. But these students are vastly in the minority. For most people the word study has a terrifying sound, or at least it contains a sobering threat to something else in life that is very dear to them, and that is their time for recre- ation—the movies or the dance or some other form of entertain- ment. Coaxing has ever been found a more effective way than driv- ing. When study is made both painless and pleasant, much will have been accomplished. Something has already been achieved in this line, and it is by the discussion study club. Fundamentally, there is nothing new in the recently developed technique of the discussion study club. It is no more and no less than the technique of a well-directed class. Education, we have been told on many occasions, is the process of 'drawing out. We have, unfortunately, too often come to think of it as a filling in, a drinking in, all for our own satisfaction. Now at the bottom of the modern idea of the discussion study club is the combination of the absorption of knowledge and the cultivation of the power to assimilate this knowledge and to give it forth again articulately and intelligently. It is the problem that has always been the problem of education, but an attempt has been made to strip the process of some of its formalities, to simplify it, and to gain inter- est, the first requisite, not by compulsion, but by art. There is another rather radical departure in the modern idea. Whereas formal classes always presuppose a mastery of the sub- ject in the teacher, the discussion study club may have as leader one who is not master of the subject, but is a learner with the rest of the group. This leader should have some of the qualifications necessary for leadership, should be able to steer the discussion into the proper channels, keep it from grounding on the reefs of interesting but extraneous subjects; should see to it that no one assumes a monopoly of the discussion, but that each has a chance to express himself, however crude or ineffective that expression may be in the beginning; in fine, the leader should be a person capable of keeping always in mind the thing he is trying to ac- complish—the development of his group in acquiring knowledge and in the power to express that knowledge. Page 74 In organizing the discussion club in any locality efforts should be made to show the laity that they are all capable of membership in such groups. They should all be urged to use their free will in joining a discussion group and their intellect in pursuing to the best of their ability the course that is set before them. To be sure it is well if there is some homogenity in these groups. The first idea in regard to membership is that no one should feel him- self excluded because of lack of academic preparation. He has his God-given preparation, his intelligence, and is capable because of that very fact of learning the truths of his religion and with practice of expressing himself upon them. When a group has been formed some informal technique of or- ganization should be adopted. A secretary should be elected or ajppointed, whose business it will be to call the roll and keep and read minutes that will be a brief review of the previous assignment. The meeting should open and close with prayer and should open and close on time. The leader will open the discussion, guide it aright, and at the proper time assign the topic or lesson for the next discussion and indicate any references that may be neces- sary. The first meeting may be slow or it may not be. If it is this fact should not be discouraging. When the members are better acquainted and have begun to see the interest that is possible from the pooling of ideas and information and the spirit of cooperation that develops from this common bond of effort—in other words, when they are warmed up, as they almost invariably are after a meeting or two, this early heaviness disappears and is replaced by spontaneous and spirited discussion. When a locality is or- ganized, the diocesan weekly will print each week during the study club session (eight weeks in the fall and eight weeks in the spring) perhaps a thousand words of comment on the lesson of the week following the issue of the paper. This obviates a collection of ma- terial by the members and furnishes adequate reference for a fuller understanding of the matter presented at the lesson. PUBLIC LIBRARY AID TO STUDY CLUBS Miss Lucille Walsh Sociology Division, Public Library, Washington, D. C. The Public Library is ever able and willing to help study club leaders and members in a number of ways. When the leader comes to the library her program is usually decided upon, at least Page 75 in a general way. The first thing which usually needs to be done, to narrow the field and get the program into working order, is the selection of the books. Many leaders feel handicapped here be- cause they are not trained in bibliographical technique, but the librarian is so trained and can easily aid in building up a reliable, selective and evaluated bibliography which will give direction to the study. The next step, and to the library, the most important, is the supplying the study club with the necessary books. This can be accomplished in a number of ways: 1. The leader may take a collection of books to her home and circulate them among the members. 2. The books need not be taken from the library. If notifi- cation is given far enough in advance, the books and magazines will be collected and placed in a designated room and the club members can come to the library and use them there. 3. If neither of these plans seems convenient the individual members can take the books out on their individual cards. In the case of the library not owning the books desired, it will be glad to order them provided the demand seems to warrant the purchase and sufficient time is allowed to put the books through the usual routine channels, necessary before they can become part of the library collection. An outside speaker is often desired for some particular pro- gram and often difficulty is encountered in obtaining one. It is almost a truism to say that those who are worth listening to seldom speak for nothing—and when they are willing, the many requests make it impossible to comply with all of them. As the library is tax supported, no one employed therein can accept recompense for speaking engagements filled during working hours, or as a representative of the library. The readers’ advisory service of the public library is becoming daily more specialized and whenever time permits the specialist in the field being studied would be glad to speak for a particular club program. These remarks have been very general. They must be so for library policies and practices differ as greatly as the communities in which they are established. But the public library of your community can render you more aid perhaps than you dream. It can answer more varied and unusual requests than you im- agine, and you may not be getting as much help as you could be- cause it has never occured to you to ask. Why not use the public facilities at your disposal in furthering your work with youth? Page 76 CATHOLIC YOUTH AND WORLD PEACE Elizabeth B. Sweeney Executive Secretary , Catholic Association for International Peace To the youth of the world, and to the guardians of youth as well, should the question of World Peace be most important and especially to those who are members of a Faith universal—a Faith founded by the Prince of Peace. Peace education and action on the part of young Catholic men and women are necessary if the principles of the Church on World Peace are to be made articulate. We are united by a super- natural faith that surmounts barriers of race and color and are members of the Mystical Body of Christ—a Body so intensely one that injury to one of its members affects every other member —and we are in duty bound to be one with those of other lands. If charity is lacking we magnify the difference of other races. If the four hundred million and more Catholics in the world today were to heed the call of Pope Pius XI and his predecessors and further the will to international peace and friendship, the menace of war which now walks abroad would be immeasurably lessened. The responsibility for wars in the future rests mainly on the shoulders of those who will direct the thoughts of tomor- row. Their efforts in this respect cannot be too great, too earnest, to meet adequately the requirements of Catholic doctrine. It is true that most people do not desire war for themselves; but the inarticulate will to peace of individuals, uninformed as to practical issues, is helpless before the organized forces of pride and greed. If youth is hesitant to promote world peace because of the higher motives of justice and charity, let it come to this conclu- sion by being shown that wars are futile and highly organized rackets in which it is the victim. Let it read The Cross of Peace , by Gibbs; Merchants of Death, by Hanighen and Engelbrecht; Blood Iron and Profits, by Seldes; Testament of Youth, by Brittain; the recent startlingly realistic story, Blood Lust, by Harvey Allen ; the findings of the Nye Committee on Munitions ; or ponder over the gruesome illustrations in Laurence Stallings’ The First World War, if it would know that it is not always “glorious and sweet to die for one’s country.” Yet it is not because of these that Catholic youth should be the leaders in the peace movement today. To Catholic youth this problem should have an especial appeal. It must learn that war is never justified until means of peace are tried and found wanting. It must know that most wars and international conflicts center now, directly or indirectly, in the national pride of peoples, in Page 77 questions of control over raw materials and markets for finished foods, and in access of people to work and livelihood in regions where higher standards of living are possible. These problems must be solved and solved now. Yet we lay emphasis upon peace- ful means of settling serious conflicts which arise from such prob- lems rather than upon the problems themselves. Catholics in the United States, and youth above all, should do more than their numerical share to prevent another world war. Our citizenship, influenced by our moral obligation to justice and charity, calls upon us (to act. Catholic youth is urged to extend Catholic Action and the knowledge of right principles in order to abolish enmity, to create a true love of peace and a willingness to spread it throughout the world. In his Christmas Allocution, Pope Pius XI in speaking of world peace says: “Here then is found a v^st field for all the Catholic laity, whom We unceasingly call upon and ask to share in the hierarchical apostolate. To Catholics of all the world, and particularly those who study, labof and pray in Catholic Action, We turn today with this warm invitation and plea. May they all unite in the peace of Christ in a full concord of thoughts and emotions, of desires and prayers, of deeds and words—the spoken word, the written word, the printed word—and then an atmosphere of genuine peace, warm- ing and beneficent, will envelop all the world.” Let youth respond to this appeal. Peace is popular. Youth wishes to share in it and if rightly directed and united this generation can lay the foundation for a new world society. The Catholic Association for International Peace has made many hopeful moves in this direction. At a recent meeting in New York representatives from Catholic colleges and Newman Clubs were called together to form the Student Peace Federation of the Catholic Association for International Peace, with a response that was stimulating and constructive. A year-round program based on the Catholic principles in international problems—printed in the twenty-seven pamphlets with their supplementary National Catholic Welfare Conference Study Outlines—may be followed by youth groups. Effective action for world peace must be preceded by a genuine knowledge of the facts involved. A thorough study of material on world questions in books, periodicals, pamphlets, the press, both secular and Catholic, is recommended. Encouragement of able lecturers in international affairs is needed as well as prepara- tion of ourselves for dissemination of Catholic international views through both the press and the lecture platform. Page 78 Creation of small study clubs on world problems, formation of international clubs in the university and college, inclusion of courses on international relations in the college curriculum, set- ting aside a section in the library for peace literature, and arrang- ing for peace debates, conferences, plays and pageants are effective means to further right thinking and action on our relation and obligation to the agencies of international life. Pope Benedict XV in his letter to the belligerents, August, 1917, proposed that . . moral right be substituted for the material force of arms in the reciprocal dealings of nations ; the nations enter upon a just agreement for the simultaneous and reciprocal reduction of arma- ments; armed force be replaced by the noble and peaceful institu- tion of arbitration.” To Catholic youth the question of world peace should have an especial appeal particularly because it is endowed with a faith and philosophy that know neither racial nor national boundaries. With it rests the solution of today’s and tomorrow’s problems — whether we shall live in a world torn by strife, born of greed and selfishness, or in a world where man may live in harmony with his Creator—the Prince of Peace—and his fellow man. SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION AND YOUTH STUDY CLUBS Mary Catherine Schaefer Social Action Department, National Catholic Welfare Conference The purpose of Catholic, as distinguished from any other youth organization or movement, is to integrate the whole life of the young men and women, all of their activities, in the Catholic faith and thus help them to restore all things in Christ. This tradition of a complete life within the Faith has had to struggle not only against ordinary human weakness, but also against a dominant philosophy of religious separateness (religion on Sunday and an intense preoccupation with financial success during the week). Today nothing obtrudes so soon, and so unpleasantly in many cases, upon youth the world over, as our economic situation, the necessity of acting within it; or what is more pertinent, the neces- sity of changing it. It forms a very vital part of life. Normally, if he is fortunate and employed, the job or position occupies nearly one-third of the life of the youth and adult. A great many Catholics do not even know that the Church has a teaching on economic life ; that her doctrines in that field are as fundamental to a really Christian society as her doctrines on mar- riage; that without subscribing to and practicing as far as possible those doctrines a complete Catholic life is impossible. Page 79 This is not to say that the Church deals with the technical aspects of economic life. There is a basic distinction between the morals of economic life and the economics of economic life. A double duty is laid upon all Catholics—youth, and those in charge of youth programs and activities as well as adults. The first is to learn the teaching of the Church on economic questions —and this means study—and then to apply it to economic facts, practices and specific relations, as they arise in their own experi- ence. It is a tremendous field for our Catholic schools and col- leges; it is a necessary consideration in any study club program for Catholic youth. The two basic documents of Catholic social teaching are, of course, Pope Leo’s Encyclical on “The Condition of Labor” and Pope Pius XI’s Encyclical “Reconstructing the Social Order.” In addition, an ever growing body of social literature is available. “The instruction of youth” is urged by Pope Pius in those very words to bring about the “reconstruction of the social order” which is only too obviously necessary. The instruction of youth by youth, as in the study club method, seems a particularly appropriate method to develop that leadership which is so badly needed in the social and economic field. The study club requires personal ac- tion. It gives free play to the expanding abilities of youth to find things out for themselves. It develops confidence. It makes them think. It draws forth—and particular attention should be paid to this point—applications of the teaching to economic circum- stances in which they find themselves—as employees, as women workers, as union members, as unemployed,—and to experiences with which they are familiar. The Encyclical “Reconstructing the Social Order,” embracing as it does the doctrines set down by Pope Leo, should be the focus, the central point of study, and the study of any economic institu- tion, situation, fact or set of facts should be related to its prin- ciples. In addition to study clubs, youth should strengthen this prepa- ration by attending, where possible, meetings of the Catholic Con- ference on Industrial Problems where local problems are discussed by experts in the light of Catholic teaching, by attending the forums which are being increasingly presented by Catholic institutions and by enrolling in the social courses offered gratis by many of the Catholic colleges in the larger cities to working young men and women. The Pope looks to the young to effect the reconstruction of the social order—to those “dense masses of young workers who listen readily to the call of divine grace and strive with splendid zeal to win their fellows to Christ” and to those “many young men (he Page 80 surely must have included young women in his intention, too), destined soon by reason of their talents or their wealth to hold distinguished places in the foremost ranks of society” who are “studying social problems with growing earnestness.” “These youth encourage,” he says, “the fairest hopes that they will devote themselves wholly to social reforms.” The Catholic youth movement must produce workers and em- ployers who will be willing to cooperate in the formation of a new social order in the spirit of justice and charity; it must cradle the Catholic social-economic scientists who are so greatly needed to elaborate the social sciences in the spirit of the Church’s teach- ing so as to bring out its application to changing facts ; it must ful- fill its purpose and help Catholic youth to live a complete Catholic life, in the economic field as in every other. CATHOLIC COLLEGE FACILITIES AND THEIR USE “AFTER HOURS” Sister Julie, O.P., M.A.Oxon. English Department , Rosary College Adult education seems a far cry from youth, but when you take one interpretation of adult education which includes those who are going “through ithe transition period between the time of leav- ing school at fourteen or fifteen and the time, less than ten years later, when they find themselves fairly definitely fixed in the course they will follow throughout life” you can see how “adult education” and “youth” are not paradoxical. It has been only within the last ten years that adult education has assumed the proportions of a national movement; so that even today what any one college is doing in the field is not exhaustive. Too, the youth movement is comparatively young and the realiza- tion of the possible resources of adult education in helping youth is not complete as yet, nor for that matter the use of Catholic college facilities. What one Catholic college is doing will show what can be done in other centers. In September, 1934, Rosary College, in River Forest, a suburb of Chicago, inaugurated “A Program of Educa- tion for Leisure.” The purpose of this program was to inspire, direct and guide the profitable use of leisure time. Courses the first year included appreciation of art, apprecia- tion of music, drawing, conversational French and German, book selection, trends in contemporary literature, the art of writing Page 81 English, public speaking, food selection, advanced accounting, public problems, the history of civilization, the new economic order and Church liturgy. The greatest demand was for the courses in contemporary literature, the art of writing English, public speaking and the new economic order. To you who are interested in Catholic Action this should be particularly significant. Here you can build lead- ers, individuals who can go out and lead study club groups, read- ing circles, industrial problem groups. You who are leading youth have a tremendous resource here that you have probably hardly tapped as yet, a tremendous re- source that is Catholic in background and tone. Yours is the re- sponsibility of finding what the Catholic college in your com- munity has to offer for the guidance and welfare of youth itself as well as for the training of leaders. Fitting in with the fourfold classification of youth activities, each Catholic college has something to offer. I speak again of Rosary College because naturally I am most familiar with its facilities. Under the heading of Spiritual, courses in the Liturgy were of- fered. If sufficient demand were evidenced, and this is where you can help by a guiding hand, courses in liturgical music could be offered. Each year retreats for high school girls have been held; there is no reason why retreats for your out-of-school girls could not be held. Rosary processions, pilgrimages to shrines on the campus, and a host of other undertakings will come to your mind. An interesting “after hour” use of college facilities is illustrated by the training of Catholic Evidence Guild workers. Beginning with an inspiring lecture by Maisie Ward Sheed, who prepared the listeners for the instructions to follow, the honor society of the college sponsored other lectures. A class for Evidence Guild work was formed, and students were trained in doctrine and methods. In July, 1935, four students and two Sisters journeyed to Okla- homa and spent a month doing Evidence Guild work, including the teaching of Catechism. Cultural and educational offerings from the standpoint of the college will be practically the same. A cultural course will nat- urally be educational. There is of course the additional influence of beautiful and restful surroundings. Lectures in art, music and literature have always been well attended. There is also the pos- sibility of orchestra work. The home economics department offers untold possibilities in making clothes, learning about costumes for plays (and here a drama department may also be utilized), learn- ing to plan for artful as well as tasty luncheons, what is the proper Page 82 setting of the table, table etiquette, economical marketing, and a host of other topics. The recreational facilities will perhaps be most attractive to the young people. Swimming pool, gymnasium, athletic club rooms and even athletic fields on Saturday or before dusk will afford op- portunities for instruction and games and parties. An outdoor fireplace is an enjoyable place for wiener roasts, steak fries, marsh- mallow roasts and story-telling. As you go through your Youth Leaders’ Notebook, as you ac- tually enter the field, you will doubtless think of many other ways in which the college in your vicinity can be useful. Both the Adult Education and the Youth movements are new and the pos- sibilities unlimited. CATHOLIC LITERARY REVIVAL Paul J. Ketrick, Ph.D. Catholic University of America “A book is a new book until you have read it.” Too often distinctions are made among books on the basis of the date of publication, as if art did not possess a timeless quality, as if there were no test but that of the critic’s column and the publisher’s blurb! Shall we say of Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” and Michel- angelo’s “Pieta” that they are old and hence to be rejected, together with Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dickens’s David Copperfield ? Shall we have two classes among books as we have among pedes- trians—the quick and the dead? Rather, it seems to me, we should distinguish two kinds of literary immortality, as Ernest Kellett in his book Reconsiderations has pointed them out. When the work of a writer sells tens of thousands of copies in his own day, we may describe his fame as horizontal. Robert Southey and Felicia Hemens furnish examples of this—popularly acclaimed once, they are barely remembered today. A critic recently re- marked, “The best thing that can be said for Mrs. Hemens is that some of her subjects are good.” By way of contrast, we may take the work of Francis Thompson, In his own day compara- tively few read his pages; today thousands admire them. We may describe such fame as vertical. The point which I am approaching is that we are the judges of books new and old, judges in what Emerson has called the Court of Angels, “not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed,” and it is our duty to pass upon the value of works of our own times and of those handed down from other gen- Page 83 erations. Reading, then, is an important duty. It is also an ex- citing process. Professor Rogers said that it is like dropping chem- icals into a test tube. It is dropping ideas into a brain. There should be a reaction; some sort of explosion. No explosion, no brain! Francis Bacon has summed up for us the whole question of reading and of studies so neatly that I cannot refrain from re- ferring to his words. “Studies,” he declares, “serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retirement, for ornament is in discourse, and for ability is in the judgment and disposition of business.” In other words, Bacon first says that books are for pleasure, recreation, re- lease. They serve as an avenue of escape from pressure, worry, loss. Secondly, when reading and thinking go together, the well- read person is interesting as a conversationalist and a writer. Bacon’s final point is that reading aids us in the affairs of life. Books reveal the mind and heart of man, his motives and aspira- tions. “A lifetime,” as one writer says, “would hardly serve to help us digest the feast of reason and flow! of soul that is offered us.” A part of this great whole is the Catholic revival in literature, that famous reawakening in the hearts of poet and preacher. As George Shuster in his book, The Catholic Spirit in Modern Eng- lish Literature, says: “Whereas there had been no great Catholic apostle in the country since the days of Campion and More, a dozen now move the hearts of men ; whereas the poetry of the old religion had been silent since Crashaw, singers now took up the Catholic lyre with abounding and brilliant gifts.” To our Catholic Youth we must show the way to a greater appreciation of the many thought-provoking books of our day — books that will aid not only to understand something of the sacred Catholic heritage of literature, art and music, but also to interpret modern life in the light of Catholic philosophy. BOOKS FOR YOUTH Mrs. Philip Hornung Trinity College Alumnae , Washington, D. C. When a group of young people undertake to familiarize them- selves with the broad subject of Catholic literature, there are a number of general considerations which should be made by the leader of the group or a committee appointed for that purpose. The field is so broad, and the paths of approach are so numerous Page 84 that there is real danger of great confusion unless some plan of at- tack, preferably a simple and adaptable one, is formulated. The outline presented is divided into two general divisions; the first a background and the second the working program which is developed against the background. The background could take several forms. In a group fortu- nate enough to have a leader who is well versed in the history and critical study of Catholic writers and Catholic literature, the back- ground could largely be filled from his store of information. In other cases it is advisable to have the background form what might be called the nucleus of a reference library. This could include one good book which dealt with the lives, works and critical esti- mate of at least ail the Catholic authors who have influenced mod- ern literature, as The Catholic Literary Revival, by C. P. Alex- ander, S.J. Besides a reference book of this type, the background could include subscriptions to two literary magazines which would sup- plement the book by providing current information and critical opinion. Depending on the resources of the club, there could also be included membership in a book club and if possible the pur- chase of three or four outstanding Catholic books each year. The working program must be constructed in such a manner as to answer two questions. The first of these is, “How many Catholic books can we hope to obtain and where shall we look for them?” The public library is of course the logical place to start and a personal appeal to the librarian will usually bring about the most gratifying results. The second question to be solved by the working program is: “How shall we select the books we wish to read?” This may be answered by referring to your “background,” and finding the books recommended in your reference book or in the favorable criticisms found in the magazines, such as The Catholic World and The Commonweal. Excellent book lists may also be obtained by writing to any publisher of Catholic books and all these sources may of course be supplemented by suggestions of the members. Current book lists suitable for Youth groups may be found in the Leaders’ Notebook published by the National Council of Cath- olic Women. A Study Club Outline of The Catholic Literary Re- vival is also being prepared and will be available soon. Page 85 RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES: HANDCRAFT Miss Beatrice Harrison Director of Art Work A handcraft project, to be truly satisfying in any functioning program, must offer the participants an opportunity to express ob- jectively their innermost urges. Of necessity, such a unit must institute a place to work and a way or plan of working through which the creative spirit of those participating might find true ex- pression. Their “desire to do” will become the compelling, self- initiated drive, setting into motion activity that will culminate in all engrossing creative experiences. Out of these experiences the doer will, no doubt, evolve a hobby, the fascination of which might well become so satisfying as to make the work irresistible and cre- ate a joy immeasurable. And to you, the leaders of the Youth Program of the National Council of Catholic Women, is extended the privilege of evolving just such a creative handcraft unit for your community. Of prior importance are these youths themselves. Eager, anx- ious, they await your invitation and inwardly wonder if you, their leader, will allow them sufficient freedom to express their own personality. Will you, they inquiringly continue, allow them to pick their own hobbyhorse and ride it as they deem wise? Will their road be guided by your signposts of don’ts and clut- tered with your hurdles of “desires for perfection,” so retarding, so hindering, so discouraging and so dangerous? Or will you be that rare leader who expresses keen enthusiasm and appreciation in whatever they consider interesting, because you realize the growth hidden within? A growth, a development that might ulti- mately result in a vocation, surely in an avocation. So often handcrafts have been denied creative development be- cause the leader feared she knew too little to institute and guide this part of her plan. To overcome such timidity, it is essential for a leader to establish a way of thinking and doing, assuring success to the doer, regardless of the amount of knowledge she herself may possess in this vast field. She needs to remember mainly a success- ful leader is one who: 1 . Has a desire and way to do rather than too much knowledge. 2. Does not need to know too much for fear she might teach too much. There is no more definite way to kill interest, enthu- thiasm and creative ability than to* teach too much. 3. Acquires the ability to get others to work with and for her. Page 86 4. Builds her program on interest rather than set patterns of others. 5. Makes an initial canvass of interests of those participating. This will demand a new plan every (time a new group starts, for interests are as varied as leaves of a tree. 6. Seeks those in her group who already know to teach others. 7. Places large, pictorial, explanatory charts in her handcraft room telling how to do, what they want to do, when they want to do it. Have you a wood-turning plant, manual training shop, or lumber yard in your locality? Ask for their waste materials. Such a wealth of unusual toys, games, nicknacks, puppets, marionettes, book covers, etc., is hidden in these cast-offs that your handcraft group will be kept as busy as Santa Claus. On page 39 of your leaders’ manual is listed the book Art Adventures with Discarded Materials. In it you will find helpful suggestions. Because it deals with ideas already over-used, I would suggest it only as a means of getting started. After a year with your own group you will, I am sure, be able to write a book that will excel anything now in print. Also on page 83 of Youth Today and Tomorrow you will find a list of activities possible with discarded materials. Let your group devise new and unique ideas of their own. Out of their experience will come handcraftsi not to be equaled and a creative unit of unparalleled satisfaction to your program. Upon you depends the amount and kind of crafts to be in- cluded in this Youth Program of tomorrow. Controlled by inter- est, evolved through keen desire and executed in the channel of creative ability, its success is already assured. Out of its many and varied contributions will come handcrafts containing art quality of lasting duration, and a functioning program impossible to equal. COMMUNITY DRAMA LEADERSHIP Mrs. Marie Moore Forrest Director, Community Drama, Washington, D. C. There are two kinds of Community Drama, first the all-city drama, which includes small groups in sections of the community; and second there is the festival, in which all neighborhood or city groups join together into a big undertaking. The latter is the real community drama, because it takes in the whole city or town. In organizing a big pageant or festival, each group has a part. You must organize not only for the people who take part, but also for leadership. The most successful way is to contact the Page 87 organized groups, bringing in the leaders for a first meeting and planning with them, by forming a board and committees. It is very important not to let the young leaders go ahead and take charge until the fundamentals are taught. It is very neces- sary that clear, clean-cut enunciation, pronunciation, and the de- velopment of the speaking voice should be taught in community drama. Therefore, our community drama leaders must not only be coaches—they must be teachers ; those put in responsible posi- tions must have had a thorough dramatic education. A good coach must teach the amateurs to be original and have their own thoughts ; they must show them the way, but they must not lead them, saying: “Do as I do.” The painter must be taught technique from a painter—then he must become the creator. Dramatically, the amateur must learn the tools (pronunciation, ar- ticulation, etc.), then he must create the drama of living in the interpretation of his own characters. One of the greatest failures in a city where the young people take dramatic art for recreational purposes only is that they are very careless and slow at rehearsals, they don’t come to enough, and aren’t willing to dig in enough. That is the reason in com- munity drama we must inspire them with the wish to do better. In community drama it is important that the leader, whether he be rehearsing small groups or thousands, have self-control. Should he lose control of himself, he loses control of others. One should keep the group together, be firm in demands upon them, but tell them with a smile. They get orders all day in business life. Most of them come from a busy life. We must change that routine so that they enjoy their work in the evenings. One who orders young people around is one who loses them. They must love to do what the teacher or leader wants, or they won’t do their best. This doesn’t mean a lack of firmness. But it does mean that they have to feel that a good friend is guiding them, one who is interested in them. ONE-ACT PLAY TOURNAMENTS Elizabeth K. Peeples Director, Community Center, Washington, D. C. We are constantly being reminded by events in every-day life of the importance of details, and the part they may play in the moulding of our destiny. Voice and posture usually create some impression on other people, favorable or otherwise. Considering their importance in our relation to other human beings, training in these matters cannot be over-estimated. There is probably no Page 88 training so good for this purpose as membership in a dramatic group and these are but two of the many things which may be learned through dramatic activities. The ability to give and take; to treat one’s neighbor with consideration and to appreciate his abilities and fundamentals of good citizenship are inevitably de- veloped in a well-handled drama group. Drama, moreover, is a natural core for other subject matter. There is no surer way to learn geography than to do the research necessary to making fit- ting sets for plays whose scenes are cast in other places. The same relationship exists between drama and architecture, drama and music, drama and dancing, drama and every other form of art. Small wonder then that every recreational executive desires above all things to stimulate an interest in drama. Naturally, one of the simplest means is a contest. Hence, the one-act play tour- nament which has flourished recently. Those who have had no experience in the organization and management of drama tourna- ments clap their hands and cry, “How delightful!” And it is. But like many another rose a tournament is not without its thorns. First of all, the interest and participation of as many amateur groups as possible must be enlisted. We have found that the one thing fatal to such interest is a belief that the tournament is being dominated by some individual or group. If the groups are to come in freely and happily, they must feel that the committee, which is necessary to manage the tournament, represents them. Every amateur group in the city should send a representative to the organization meeting, at which time the tournament commit- tee is elected. The tournament committee has a much larger problem than the uninitiated might suppose. The first question which it has to settle is, “What is an amateur dramatic group?” For example, are two people who have never acted together before but have come together for the purposes of the tournament an amateur group? Is a hand-picked collection of people, selected by a shrewd director and including a few talented young amateurs, a few older amateurs who are approaching the professional class with, perhaps, an ex-professional thrown in for good measure, an amateur dramatic group? Is a group of several persons who en- gage in no dramatic activity whatever during the entire year, except as they enter a play annually in the tournament, an ama- teur dramatic group? Equally vexing is the question of individual participation. Shall the same person be allowed to act in and direct a play? Shall the same actor be allowed to appear in two different plays? Shall the same person be allowed to direct two different plays? What constitutes professionalism? How shall we definitely deter- Page 89 mine in every case just what constitutes an amateur or a pro- fessional? Passing upon the plays submitted by the various groups who hope for a place in the tournament is one of the most serious pieces of work before the committee. We have a phrase here which bars a play “giving offense to propriety.” Increasingly, as time goes on, propaganda plays putting for- ward various “isms,” Communism, Socialism, pacifism, etc., are being presented for the committee’s scrutiny. To what extent dares your organization go in for propaganda? If there is a rule against a play which carries a very definite message should there not be a rule against a play which has no message at all? On the choice of judges rests the success of the tournament project. People best qualified to be helpful in such matters are invariably busy people. It is by no means easy to find five people who can give five nights out of two weeks to this activity, even though there are many who genuinely desire to do so. All those who have done educational or recreational work realize that prizes selected with a view to their psychological re- lation to the activity for which they are given are stimulating and desirable. The need for cash is usually the most urgent on the part of amateur drama groups; many a beautiful plan for the production of a play goes glimmering simply for lack of a few dollars to make the necessary preparations. Probably a one-act play tournament is as nearly maddening as any activity ever undertaken. Still, I can assure you with no less emphasis that it is utterly fascinating, and that if ever you hold one you will never again be without this annual event. THE VALUE OF DRAMA TO YOUTH Nancy Ordway Georgetown Visitation College We as ia nation are developing in the theatre world. Our rising theatre depends on our theatre-minded youth. You must encour- age it in your schools and communities. Acting isn’t just that ex- citing smell of grease-paint, and that sickening feeling as you stand in the wings awaiting your entrance cue, nor is it the plaudits of your friends; it is the actual character building, the growing up of young people. Acting in plays is a fine thing for a young person ; it makes him sure of himself; it gives him poise, command of speech and diction. Working with others gives him a sense of values, and the vastly important virtue of cooperation. As Sir Francis Bacon once said, “Acting gives youth a develop- Page 90 ment of the memory, voice, good pronunciation, decent carriage of the body, vesture and assurance.” Not only does it help in this way, but it helps form construc- tive ideas. The reason the youth of today are so against war is that they have seen its actual horrors on stage and screen. Not long ago they used to think it was a chance for showing off—brass buttons, bugles, all the glory and romance of a great pageant. Now through the medium of stage and screen they know the truth! The youth of today are ever seeking new information, new in- terests. Don’t hold back when they want to play a sophisticated drama. Let them! When I say sophisticated, I don’t mean the average cheap farce; I have in mind current plays such as “Dead End,” “Winterset” and others. Let the play be hard, bitter, full of in- justice and let the young man and woman taste 1 life in the harm- less form of the theatre. Let them learn from others’ experience in plays, not by the hard knocks they will get in the world. Let them learn the full meaning of things by acting for one evening the life of a striking coal miner, let them feel the fear of death in a French dugout, the horrors of starvation and utter poverty, see social and economic circumstances, dirty politics, and human frailties. May I tell you of an interesting Theatre Workshop for children in Scarsdale, New York. It was started two years ago, in 1934, and their first production was “Treasure Island.” Those children made and painted the scenery, the costumes, the small properties, such as guns and cutlasses which they carved from wood. They de- signed and decorated fabrics, they thought up ballet routines, and even wrote songs—words and music. Their only guidance was in the fundamentals of color and design, and the placing of their ideas in the* right channels. So you see, it is an expression of all the arts ! That’s the sort of place that breeds Wagners, Beethovens, Nijinskys, Ibsens and O’Neills ! There is something to try in your home town to develop your local talent! By community work we are establishing the theatre in the so-called “Stix”—small chips that feed the big fire in New York, small chips that nevertheless keep the fire alive. DIRECTING YOUTH IN THE DRAMA Denis E. Connell Drama Guild oj Washington What does youth get out of the drama? Only so much as it is able to put in, considering its experience. Therefore, for youth to get from the drama anything beyond its own experience, it is Page 91 essential that proper direction be supplied. This is not peculiar to the drama alone. It applies in all things. We do not have to pander to “Box-Office.” Let us select such plays as will tell of life in its many phases. We all know that evil exists, but no earthly good can come from presenting evil in its worst forms and calling it “theatre.” Aside from anything else, the impressions left by evil plays in the minds of the players are like so man cancerous growths; they remain quiescent for a time only to erupt later, dangerously and frequently, incurably. Our first move then must be towards the selection of clean, healthy plays. In amateur organizations, situations rapidly develop which give cause for quiet alarm. The successful players become quite elated over their success; and we find them unwilling to assume roles of lesser importance in our next production. Jealousies, dis- satisfactions, and rivalries creep in and we find the morale of our little groups sadly affected. In the professional company there is always the remedy of dismissal. Among amateurs that, too, is a way out but not a good one. Granted, that our little groups would be far, far better off without the malcontents because nothing will so undo our work as quickly as a jealous person; yet we are not professional and we are seeking to build up rather than tear down ; to educate rather than be professional to the last word. Those of you who would be directors assume a difficult task, one filled with trials and tribulations. Directing, to my mind, is a happy medium between those two extremes of merely holding the book of the play and seeing to it that the players get on and off and move about, and simply letting the players interpret as they see fit, backed by a thorough knowledge of the play and the motivation of the several characters therein. Do not undertake to direct a play unless you are sure that you can handle the tools of the trade—unless you are skilled enough to dip your brush into the paint of your actors and paint your scene upon the canvas of the stage. Study your play thoroughly so that you know what motivates the several characters. If you know, then you can impart that knowledge to the players. If left alone, the young actor performs in any sort of fashion. If you can explain to him just WHY he, in character, says or does this or that thing, then he will all the more intelligently portray that character. Thus, if your direction is true, he will gradually begin to interpret more truly to life, and in consequence gain in knowledge of comparative values. Under such a system your performer broadens and develops mentally and he is getting more out of the play than he has put into it, for not Page 92 only are his own values being built into the play, but also such values as you have given him. Left to himself, he gets nothing. As a director, you are responsible for the contentment of your group. Therefore, keep your eyes closely upon the development of what actors are pleased to call temperament. We are all en- titled to feel gratified at the successful accomplishment of our aims and purposes but should keep a mild but firm rein upon the budding thespian whose success tends to give him exaggerated ideas of his ability. At the very beginning, impress upon your players that a play must necessarily have big parts and small parts, and that the small parts are just as essential as the big ones. Impress upon them, also, that leading roles are of many varieties, hence one man cannot play them all. Carry on your direction so that the value of the play is brought out. With a true conception of the motivation, your players will absorb true conceptions of the play of life, and not be left stranded with nothing but false standards to prop up their ideas as to what life is all about.' Everyone who directs must make a beginning. Just let that beginning be an honest one; an honest approach to a delightful subject, and the resultant joy of seeing your players gradually opening out into definite portrayals of the theme at hand is recom- pense enough. The knowledge that you have helped those young people to better understand some phase of this complex thing called life will give you an almost incomparable feeling of satis- faction. If you would have youth get much from the drama, you, as director, must put much therein. Your knowledge and experi- ence of life must be placed before youth so that it may partake thereof. Through the medium of the drama give youth the op- portunity to learn of life through your experience, and always so that the aspirants be guided soundly, keeping out all ugliness and false philosophy. I am reminded of an excerpt from a dis- course by the late Archbishop Keane: “There is truth at the heart of things, though lies sound never so loudly. There is beauty at the heart of things, though deformity presses on us so sadly. There is goodness at the heart of things, though evil so often seems to have its own way.” The true, the beautiful and the good. Look for them in your play selecting, and in your directing create appreciation of these, and happy they, and happy we, in the understanding and wise use thereof. Page 93 THE BLACKFRIARS GUILD AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUTH Rev. John McLarney, O.P. Moderator , Blackfriars Guild, Washington Chapter Many Catholics adopt an attitude of indifference toward the Catholic theatre, resulting in the failure of numerous attempts to establish a fine Catholic amateur movement because of the lack of support from those who should be the first to support it. The reason for this indifference is not hard to find. The drama which was born of Hellenic culture died of Roman poison. The revival of drama through the instrumentality of liturgical wor- ship in the ages of Faith, encouraged by the Church and loved by the faithful, was responsible for the appearance of modern drama. Puritanism sought its extinction. Paganism strove for its prostitution. The latter influence has had the better of it, if we may judge from present conditions. The evils which brought about the death of the classic theatre in the last days of the Roman Empire have again sprung up to attack the modern stage. The predominance of these evils has led many people to believe that the stage is entirely bad and should be discreetly left to its own destruction by virtuous men and women. Whatever be the good motives behind such an attitude, it is, nevertheless, not reasonable and not in accordance with the con- stant policies of Mother Church. Under her guidance, the liturgy supplied the place of the ancient drama. With her inspiration the liturgy burgeoned and the miracle plays, the mystery plays and the morality plays were born. It may be said in connection with the development of modern drama that the first stage of it was the altar, its first theatre was the Christian temple and its first audience the faithful of Christ. Mother Church has recog- nized from, the beginning that culture is truth translated by con- templation into character. To enculture her children she has al- ways been the first great patron of the arts. In her patronage the dramatic art has not been neglected. She has seen in it a happy combination of many arts: painting, sculpture, music and poetry. At one and the same time drama appeals to the two senses which are fundamental in education, the sight and the hearing. Rather than ignore the opportunity which it offers for the betterment of her children, the Church has nourished, im- proved and, occasionally, corrected the drama. Her children should cooperate in the work. The Blackfriars Guild is an organization of the laity which has for its object the study and production of the drama accord- Page 94 ing to the philosophy, psychology and sociology of the Catholic Church. It invites members from the entire community in which it is established. There are chapters of the Guild in Washington, Pittsburgh, Providence, Louisville and Cleveland. In many other cities as far west as Vallejo, applications have been made for in- clusion under the Blackfriar standard. Membership is not re- stricted to Catholics, but all who adopt the purposes and ideals of the Guild are welcomed. The Guild offers to its members an instruction in sound think- ing applied to the dramatic art. It promotes the study of the drama in order that truth may be recognized and falsehood de- tected. It produces the good play, which need not be professedly religious, in order that its audiences may be convinced that the truth, properly interpreted and presented, lends itself more read- ily than error to the betterment of entertainment. The purpose of the Guild may be seen in its contention that a good play, comic or tragic, is much better than a bad play and infinitely more in- teresting. Blackfriars Guild offers to its members certain occupational advantages which can be merely sketched here. The practice of dramatic expression, with its singular training in diction, grace and force of speech, is at the volition of the member. Stage-craft, which includes lighting, scene-construction, painting, decoration and other features, may be learned by experience in any Guild production. The science of publicity or public relations, includ- ing journalistic composition and photography, so necessary for the acquisition of a subscription list and faithful audiences, may be acquired by following the lead of the publicity committee. The business administration required for the successful production is the test of the ability and common sense of any member. Music, until now a minor factor in Blackfriar activity, is a major possi- bility of the future. Sound recording and amplification by pub- lic address system is not outside the scope of Blackfriar work. In a few words, the Blackfriars Guild builds its play from the ground up. Whenever possible it writes its own plays. It makes its own scenery, fashions its own lights, makes its own costumes, directs and enacts its own drama. This brief outline of the Blackfriar movement may be summed up in the statement that it aims to put truth behind the produc- tion and into the production. It fights for sound thought in the composition of the play. It argues for better plays and better writers. It labors to weave the infinite varieties of Catholic truth, redolent with the traditions of ancient culture and bright with the promises of a triumphant future, into the beautiful drama. The Guild would present beautiful literature in the modern, effi- Page 95 dent and handsome setting which it deserves. It would make its own stage and would elicit from Catholic pens a vibrant dramatic literature. Blackfriar Guild would enter into competition with no other organization. It seeks no glory for itself or its mem- bers. It seeks no reward but that which comes to a work well done for God and His Church. The influence of organizations like Blackfriars Guild upon the development of youth may be remote, rather than proximate, indirect, rather than direct, but it is none the less powerful and, we may say, necessary. It is a truism that the physical and spir- itual well-being of youth be preserved and ameliorated. Relin- quishing the physical aspect of the problem to others, we shall limit ourselves here to the spiritual. The spiritual aspect embraces factors which are intellectual, disciplinary and aesthetic. Youth must be taught well, trained well and must be given a taste for goodness by the presentation of beauty. Unfortunately in our, days, the very foundation of child development is weakened by the destruction of family life. Intellectual training is suffering parental neglect and atheistic education. A lack of individual responsibility has rendered juvenile discipline a distasteful burden. ^Esthetic appetites are cloyed by the pagan art which is currently popular. The future of youth is hopelessly imperiled unless proper remedies are found. It is our contention that the drama is one of the proper remedies. The drama has always been a mighty force in social and re- ligious life. The drama can rehabilitate the popular notion of family life by presenting that life as it should be. It can assist in reerecting the only genuine clinic for child development: the true home. The drama can go far to reclaim the true ideals of marriage. It can, as no other art, create in the popular mind the proper viewpoint in the care and training of defective children. Let one fine drama be written and produced which will present the beauty of that sacrifice which a mother makes in caring for an unfortunate little one and a hundred thousand mothers will be consoled and encouraged! The drama can present a well-rounded Catholic life to the parents and children of this country. It can motivate and inspire as can no other art motivate and inspire. Its power should not be ignored. This work may be remote to the concrete case of the develop- ment of youth, but, if a large view be taken, it will be recognized as fundamental. Without it our stage-struck and “Movie-made” children will be left to their doom. The Legion of Decency has achieved splendid results in the improvement of the cinematic output. The results were achieved, nevertheless, by negative poli- cies. The indecent was condemned and the decent was recom- Page 96 mended. But the Legion of Decency does not presume to create the decent play. It merely approves it when it appears. It is the aim of Blackfriars Guild to create the good play. If, through the medium of a national Catholic play contest, which Black- friars Guild hopes to launch in a year’s time, there can be elicited from Catholic minds and pens a new dramatic literature for pres- entation on Catholic stages, a great step forward will be taken. It is hoped that the winning plays will not be hidden in far-away places but, adjudged by the best critics in the country, that they will be produced in the Capital by an all-star Blackfriar cast re- cruited from Blackfriar chapters throughout the country. This work is remote and indirect in its influence of develop- ment of youth. But, if the Blackfriar work succeeds, no one who is vitally interested in the future of our children will ever regret its success. ATHLETICS FOR GIRLS Mrs. Maurice Rosenberg National Board, Women’s Division, National Amateur Athletic Federation Athletics as a part of a well-rounded youth program should bring joy and health to the participant ; athletics as an end-all of such a program results not only in overstrained bodies, but in minds overstressing the physical or material side of life. To give to our young women the happiness of playing together is to pre- pare for the greater task of working together. As the Women’s Division of the National Amateur Athletic Federation we believe in competition and that wholeheartedly. Of course we play to win, and rightly so, but when the entire emphasis is placed on winning, the joys and physical benefits which one should derive from the activities are frequently smoth- ered under the undue stress and strain necessary for a champion- ship, whether it be community, city, state or nation. Where cham- pionships are in the foreground, only the few are trained, only those who excel have the benefit of expert coaching and the use of playfields and stadiums, while the masses are the spectators, cheering and singing for a victory at any cost. Rather should we encourage the backward girl and the girl who likes to play for play’s sake. The range of possibilities is so great that she can pick and choosey and with proper guidance find games and sports suitable to her age, capacities and desires. We believe that where girls and women are participating, trained women teachers and women officials should be in imme- Page 97 diate charge. Likewise, through years of experience and study, adoption of girls’ rules have come about that are best taught, in- terpreted and supervised by trained women. This safeguards the physical well-being of the individual, and makes for greater enjoyment of the game. Against such a wholesome background, play situations develop character and inculcate the sportsmanship ideal, and how we need the attributes of good sportsmanship and character today. Now, in order to get the many into the game as against the highly trained few, intra-mural activities and play days are recom- mended and once tried the girls themselves will want more and more such good times together. Girls were not made for severe athletic endurance, and with the right leadership will never want it. It is the inspiring task of our young women leaders today to teach youth to play happily and fairly together as they must later work together. GAMES Marian Abrams Girls’ Worker, Christ Child Society, Washington, D. C. Games properly taught and played give to recreation its real meaning of recreation. They make it a force bringing out the very best in a person enabling him to interpret and reinterpret life, to forget himself—utterly relaxed in joyful fellowship. And the finest thing about them is that they cost so little and repay a thousandfold. The cost is very definite, however, and the successful leader of games must pay it in full. In the first place the leader must be at ease—apparently so, at least, and to be at ease he must plan carefully with both the age-group and occasion in mind, always remembering that he must have enough material ready to allow for flexibility. One must not expected a program to go exactly as it has been planned, regardless of the very evident wish of the group to play something else. Sometimes because the group is kindly and tolerant and the leader so earnest, the program is carried through but usually the leader is not so fortunate. One must be sensitive to the constantly changing atmosphere in a group and be on the alert to detect danger signals which evidence oncoming boredom or boisterousness, changing games to meet the situation. A second important thing is to know when to change games. One must watch for the first sign of lessened enthusiasm and re- Page 98 vive it by another game or add a more difficult or amusing twist to the game being played. Never admit to the group that the game is a flop—for the spirit of play is a sensitive thing. It can be built up easily, but seldom rebuilt. The admitted failure of one game is a sad handicap to the success of others. Play the game only until the goal of the game has been reached. Some games are played only for a laugh, some are ice- breakers, some have for their goal earnest competition—others through ridiculously amusing competition have the high goal of revealing innate good sportsmanship. Sustained interest is abso- lutely essential—without it the goal cannot be reached and so sometimes must be sacrificed. Sustained interest is the greatest problem for you, the leader. If the games are interesting to you, if you feel good fellowship toward your group it will be unmistakable in every direction you give, in every word you say. If you feel, “Oh, dear, how shall I ever keep them amused,” your group will feel themselves a bur- den and sit back leaden. You, the leader, must be convinced that you possess and are having the joy of giving to others the key of fun and laughter and good fellowship. You, the leader, must like games for them- selves, you must have as much fun as anyone in the group. You must laugh with the group—never at them. As long as these things are true of you, your group will never let you down. In fact, they will sustain you, after carrying you over such hideousness as stage-fright, laughing you gently out of unforeseen embarrassments. Remember, leader of games, have a good time yourself, forget yourself as you—expect in the sincerity of your purpose to re- energize, re-vivify, re-create people through genuine good time. RESOLUTIONS OF THE SECOND ANNUAL YOUTH INSTITUTE WHEREAS, Seventy-five (75) women from twenty-seven dioceses of the United States, Philippine Islands and Germany, convened at the Youth Institute of the National Council of Cath- olic Women in Washington, D. C., June 22 to 27, 1936, have con- sidered the problem of youth, with particular emphasis and study of Catholic Youth in the light of Catholic Social teaching; and WHEREAS, Such study and interchange of experience have resulted in a better understanding of the problems of youth, and Page 99 WHEREAS, The Youth Leaders’ Loose-Leaf Notebook is valuable for reference and study, BE IT RESOLVED, That the members of the Institute deem such an Institute essential to the development of a youth program, and do hereby request that the Administrative Board of the Na- tional Council of Catholic Women sponsor a similiar Institute in 1937, and continue the Notebook service, WHEREAS, The Administrative Board of the National Cath- olic Welfare Conference has sanctioned and encouraged this Youth Institute, and WHEREAS, the Administrative Board of the Na- tional Council of Catholic Women has sponsored and attended this Youth Institute, BE IT RESOLVED, that an expression of sin- cere appreciation be sent to the Executive Secretary of each Board. WHEREAS, The Most Rev. Bernard J. Shiel, Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago, and Assistant Episcopal Chairman of the Department of Lay Organizations of the National Catholic Wel- fare Conference, has given impetus and vision to this program, and WHEREAS, his Excellency graciously attended and addressed this Institute at great inconvenience to himself; and WHEREAS, his inspiration to love and understand youth will guide us in our work, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Youth Institute express its gratitude and deep indebtedness to His Excellency. WHEREAS, Miss Anne Sarachon Hooley, Chairman of the National Council of Catholic Women National Committe on Youth, has given unselfishly of her time, thought and energy to this program, and WHEREAS, Miss Agnes G. Regan, Executive Secretary of the National Council of Catholic Women; Miss Margaret T. Lynch, Assistant Executive Secretary of the National Council of Catholic Women, and Miss Anna Rose Kimpel, Field Secretary for Youth, National Council of Catholic Women, have planned the program, and inspired the deliberations of this Youth Institute, BE IT RESOLVED, That they be given a rising vote of thanks. WHEREAS, The National Catholic School of Social Service has so generously housed this Institute, and WHEREAS Miss Clara A. Bradley has so graciously arranged for the comfort and pleasure of the members of this Institute, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Youth Institute hereby express its appreciation to Miss Bradley and to the Director of the School. Page 100 WHEREAS, Miss Beatrice Harrison, a member of the Insti- tute, has given unstintingly of her time and talent for the further- ing of creative art and happier living, BE IT RESOLVED, that the enthusiastic gratitude of the members of this Institute be for- warded to her. WHEREAS, The Speakers and discussion leaders of the pro- gram of the Youth Institute have contributed invaluable infor- mation and experience to the members of this Institute, and WHEREAS, members of the local committee have assisted the Staff, and WHEREAS, Miss Nora Rothschild, a student of the National Catholic School of Social Service, has wholeheartedly shared the responsibility of the Committee, BE IT RESOLVED, that we hereby express our appreciation to them. WHEREAS, it is impractical for all leaders of Catholic Youth to attend a national Institute, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Ad- ministrative Board of the National Council of Catholic Women be asked to encourage and to assist regional institutes throughout the country. Page 101 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC YOUTH COUNCIL NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CATHOLIC WOMEN The Catholic Youth Program should be: National in scope; Diocesan in authority; Parochial in function. A National program definte enough to' aid: Flexible enough to serve local communities. A program varied enough for all interests, Allowing selection to suit need. A program adaptable to all organizations; Not a new organization but a federation of existing youth groups. A program fitted for: Juniors, High School groups, Out-of-school groups. A program with a standard framework of organization (that of the National Council of Catholic Women.) Same officers with corresponding duties; Same committees with duties corresponding to age and ability; With definite arrangement for mutual representaton on junior and senior boards. A program of oneness so that the girl will, with ease pass from the junior program through the high school group, through the post- high school group into the adult program of Catholic Action. THE COUNCIL’S ORGANIZATION National Council or Catholic Women National Youth Committee Diocesan Youth Committee Deanery Youth Committee Parish Youth Committee Parish Chairmen compose Deanery Committee Deanery Chairmen compose Diocesan Committee Diocesan Chairmen compose National Committee Page 102 Functions of Chairmen: I. Diocesan Chairmen: To interpret the program approved by the Ordinary. To give inspiration and information. To relay to Deanery Chairmen and others all source material sent out by National Headquarters. To assist in carrying out programs of activities. To collect, summarize and report the work accomplished within the diocese. II. Deanery Chairman: To assist the Diocesan Chairman in extending the Diocesan program. To encourage local efforts in organizing and programming. To be available as helpers, when called upon. III. Parish Chairman: To be named after consultation with the pastor. To tie the Girls’ program with the pastor’s parish plans. To cooperate with the Boys’ Youth organization in such activities as seem desirable. To keep the Deanery, and through her, the Diocesan Chairman in- formed of needs and accomplishments. To assure the functioning of the Parish Youth Committee. Parish Youth Committee 1. Membership: Pastor and assistants. Parish Youth Chairman. Chairman of youth clubs. (Sodality, junior fratemals, clubs, etc.) 2. Meetings—Regular at stated times. 3. Functions: To interpret aims, ideals and methods of program to parish and community. To plan parish programs. To secure leaders for clubs-classes. To aid in providing and caring for facilities. Page 103 The program should include activities: I. Spiritual: Group prayers Missions Apologetics Field Mass Liturgy Retreats Corporate Communion Communion Breakfasts Days of Recollection “Our Lady” 1 Days II. Cultural: Study Clubs Discussion groups Reading groups Trips-tours Libraries Music Dramatics Art III. Vocational: Vocational Guidance Parent Education Homemaking Commercial Training Handicrafts Home Economics Apprentice Training IV. Recreational: Hobby Clubs Sports-Games Hiking-iCamping Swimming Play Days Picnics Parties Dancing Community Nights SUGGESTED “HELPS” Leaders’ Loose-leaf Note-book... _ _ $1.00 (A practical book of everyday helps for youth leaders.) Youth—Today and Tomorrow. . * .25 (Proceedings of 1935 Youth Institute.) Youth—'Leadership and Catholic Action 25 (Proceedings of 1936 Youth Institute.) Proceedings 1935 National Convention _ . + 1.75 (Report of Youth panels and addresses.) Page 104 J ::