Good Catholics

In the dusty, sun-drenched squares of Rome last week newsvendors brandished copies of the Papal daily Osservatore Romano, shrieked "Pope's open letter! Pope's open letter!"

For perhaps ten minutes L'Osservatore sold as fast as sellers could make change. Then Fascist police pounced. Bewildered, feebly -protesting newsvendors were marched off to face Fascist judges, sentenced uniformly to six days in jail. "If you sell L'Osservatore Romano hereafter," the culprits were sternly warned, "you must do so without announcing its contents."

The Papal letter which made L'Osservatore a best seller was addressed to Alfredo Ildefonso Cardinal Schuster, Archbishop of Milan. His Holiness had put thunder & lightning into every sentence, thus:

"Fascism says it is Catholic and wishes to be Catholic. Now in order to be Catholics not in name only but in deed also; in order to be true, good Catholics, not Catholics of false name and Catholics who in the great family of the church wound the heart of Mother Church by their manner of speaking and acting and give such a bad example as to drive others away, there is only one indispensable means--to obey the Church and its head and to think with the Church and its head.

" Fascisti obey the Party and its Duce, think with it and him (as best they can). Further on in his letter Pope Pius accused Fascisti of "exposing youth to inspirations of hate and irreverence . . . rendering difficult and almost impossible the practice of religious duties . . . and . . . permitting public exhibitions of feminine athletics, the improprieties and inconveniences of which even pagans realized."*

Point of the Papal letter was to repel a recent charge by Giovanni Giurati, Secretary of the Fascist Party, that Italy's Catholic Action "pursues political ends."

After stating that the Catholic Action, as an organization, "remains exclusively in the spiritual field," His Holiness declared: "It is equally certain, however, that the Catholic Action does not prevent and cannot prevent its followers from concerning themselves in a Christian and Catholic manner with true and good politics, namely, politics which seek to promote the good of the community."

In the U. S., the Economics Commission of the Council of Christian Associations issued, last week, a socialistic report (see p. 25).

* Masculine athletics enjoy the ardent patronage of His Holiness, a notable mountain climber when younger.

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