Esthetic Piety

Can literature help the common man heavenward? It did once, when art was worshipful. Last week The Christian Century considered the state of the church's once potent ally, religious drama. Much U. S. Protestant church drama, complained Professor Fred Eastman of Chicago Theological Seminary, is of low quality. There has been improvement in recent years. But U. S. churches must strive for results comparable to those of the religious dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; or the Canterbury Cathedral play written four years ago by John Masefield, with music by Gustav Holst.

Professor Eastman quoted the late Professor Gerald Birney Smith: "Protestantism has suddenly become conscious of the inartistic quality of many phases of its portrayal of religion. . . . If Protestantism is worth preserving it can be preserved only as it shall be made as obviously dignified and worthy as Catholicism. But this dignifying of Protestantism cannot be a mere imitation. . . ." Poetry Society. Catholicism is well aware that it is "dignified and worthy." Like Author Ludwig Lewisohn (see p. 55) it knows that poems as well as masses save souls. There is in the U. S. a Catholic Writers Guild. Last year there was founded the Catholic Poetry Society of America. All poets and those interested in poetry (including non-Catholics whose works are sympathetic with Catholic principles) may join as General Members. More selective are divisions of Executive Members and Academy Members whose number (self-perpetuating) is limited to 33. President of the Society is President Charles Leo O'Donnell of the University of Notre Dame; vice presidents include Agnes Repplier, Aline Kilmer, Theodore Maynard. Last month the Catholic Poetry Society adopted a constitution, last week in Manhattan held its first public meeting. The Society's headquarters are next door to those of America, urbane Jesuit weekly whose literary editor, Father Francis Talbot. S. J., is chaplain to the Society. A onetime English teacher at Boston University, Father Talbot helped found the Catholic Book Club which selects secular books for the faithful to read. This month he is to publish a book of plays. Shining in the Dark.

Purity & Authenticity. Best current exposition of the Church's view of literature was in last week's America, in the weekly page "With Scrip and Staff" signed by The Pilgrim (a title shared by various members of the staff). Said The Pilgrim: "That we need Catholic poetry today, there is no shadow of doubt. The Church will be, as she always is, Catholic and Holy without poetry, as with it. But her holiness will not shine, her catholicity will not move the great tides of human emotion unsung as much as if spoken in verse. . . . More souls have been saved by the Dies Irae; the Lauda Sion; or the Veni Sancte Spiritus than by any sermon yet preached. . . . But . . . the non-Catholic civilization in which we live does not of itself provide a setting for Catholic thoughts. We lack that web of associations with things holy, things charitable or just or spiritually awe-inspiring which mark a Catholic civilization. . . . The Poetry Society has the opportunity to pick out just those great common things in our American life which, though meaningless to the generality, are yet full of meaning to those who have but a moderate degree of insight, a casual acquaintance with Catholic history, a slight knowledge of Catholic doctrine and its implications. . . . The Catholic poetic group . . . will lay their hands upon those elements in our American life which will show forth the Catholic view of life even to the generality, to the non-Catholic, to the spiritually illiterate, to the infidel. . . . Such work is essentially group work. The fact that the group is somewhat lonely, as compared with our Literary Guilds and Best Seller poets, adds to the difficulty, but ensures purity and authenticity of product in the end."

Ave Maria & Limericks. It is perhaps Notre Dame's misfortune that her fame is chiefly in football, that her President O'Donnell is known (to the masses perhaps not even by name) mainly as a eulogizer of the late coach Knute Kenneth Rockne. Father O'Donnell has done other things. Born in Greenfield, Ind. 47 years ago, he was graduated from Notre Dame in 1906. Later he studied at Holy Cross College and Harvard, was ordained in the Congregation of the Holy Cross of which he is now Assistant Superior General. Father O'Donnell was chaplain to the A. E. F. in 1918-19. A professor of English literature at Notre Dame, he became president in 1928.

Smallish, precise, bespectacled, Father O'Donnell is known to a discerning few as a sensitive, delicate poet. Many U. S. Catholics think him too good to be a college president. He is an editor of Ave Maria, founded at Notre Dame in 1875 with a gift from the late Empress Eugenie. Besides writing Catholic verse (The Dead Musician, Cloister, A Rime of the Rood). Father O'Donnell plays bridge, amuses himself composing limericks.

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