Pope on Nudism

In pontifical Latin, prepared for him, as always, by his Congregation for Latin Letters, Pope Pius XI last week solemnly flayed Nudism. Speaking before Lenten preachers on the eve of Ash Wednesday, he declared:

'The pagan tendencies in present-day life afflict all open and attentive eyes. For many people, life is specifically and paganly given over only to pleasure, to the quest after pleasure and to amusement that is specifically and paganly immodest, with an immodesty that often exceeds that of ancient pagan life, inasmuch as it is addicted to what is termed, with a horrible word and horrible blasphemy, the practice and cult of nudity. In ancient times nudity existed only in art and could not be said to exist in life, neither in Rome nor Greece, and that is saying very much."

Quick to retort to the Holy Father was Rev. Ilsley Boone, executive secretary of the International Nudist Conference. "A careful re-reading," said he in Manhattan, "suggests that the Pontiff was not attacking American nudism, since no authenticated case of wantonness or immorality has been cited against the organized movement in this country. . . . He refers to a 'cult' indulging in wantonness, and the American movement, no matter what else it may be, is certainly not a 'cult'. . . . Its leadership here includes members of the Protestant clergy and Catholic laymen. . . ."

Meanwhile the anti-Nudism bill sponsored by Alfred Emanuel Smith as head of the New York Legion of Decency had quietly collapsed in the New York State Legislature (TIME, Jan. 14). At a committee hearing last month plenty of opponents showed up but only the National Catholic Welfare Conference went on record for the measure and then only by sending the committee a letter. Dr. Charles Francis Potter, Manhattan humanist, helped laugh the bill to death by pointing out that its provision against a person exposing his body in the presence of two or more persons of the opposite sex, similarly exposed, would make it illegal for a woman to give birth to twin boys.

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