Lips Rebuked

Lazy women who got up only in time to attend the 12:15 o'clock mass at St. Ambrose Church, in Detroit, received a severe surprise. Father Foley, their assistant pastor, surveyed them with a stern glance and said that in the future no woman who had paint upon her lips would be given holy communion from his hands. In sombre terms, such as his Pontiff recently used to condemn similar lapses in female behavior (TIME, May 14), Father Foley characterized the use of lipstick: "This practice is irreverent and unbecoming and I will not countenance it."

Informed of the event, non-Catholics were properly impressed by this example of the technical propriety with which Catholics surround the sacrament. They wondered, nonetheless, whether such a rebuke might not be even more fitting when applied to the members of some Protestant sect who, when they take communion, actually touch the chalice with their mouths; rather than to Catholics who merely stick out their tongues to receive small circles of wafer.