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THE  RESTLESS  FLAME,  DANIEL  LORD,  S.J.

Thinking Big in a Parochial World


Chapter 10    Chapter 12


EXTRA   MATERIAL

Chapter Eleven - 1927
Lord of the Pamphlets

A Story Told by Daniel Lord

St. Paul—Minneapolis

The eternal feud between the Twin Cities is a source of constant amusement to me.

Said I, tauntingly (and to get a rise), to a dweller in Minneapolis:  What’s your city got that St. Paul hasn’t got?

The answer was a shake of the head.

I’ll have to admit, he said, that there is one thing St. Paul’s got that Minneapolis hasn’t.

I braced myself for this unexpected admission.

When people in St. Paul look out of their town, he continued, they can see across the river a beautiful, thriving city.  We haven’t that view.1

More on the Pamphlets by Daniel Lord

Daniel Lord Pamphlet: Shall I Be A Nun?

It is hard to judge Lord’s pamphlet, Shall I Be Nun?  It starts with a fairy tale of a king in a cold castle asking a beggar girl to leave everything and marry him.  Then it goes on to use the marriage imagery as a way to understand the religious life.  Consistent with Lord’s theology of happiness, Lord argues that religious life is a path of happiness.

Lord followed with Shall My Daughter Be A Nun?  This was Lord’s first of many dialogue pamphlets.  Father Brooks talks to Mrs. Hutton the reluctant mother of Jane who wants to enter the convent.

But, solemnly, before God, I can promise you, Mrs. Hutton, that if you have the faith and courage to let your daughter do what God wants her to do she will be happy for life.  I promise you in return for the vocation of your daughter happiness for her—and happiness for you.2

This pamphlet answers the objections of reluctant parents such as Who will care for us in our old age?  Father Brooks raises the question about how many marriages turn out unhappy.  He asks Are we going to send the best girls out into the world and keep only the third-raters to do God’s work and serve humanity?3  It is hard to read this pamphlet today and not feel a bit uncomfortable that Father Brooks is manipulating Mrs. Hutton.

But the broader question is whether the religious life is a path to happiness.  For some Catholic who had sisters as teachers, the adjective ‘happy’ might seem an odd label for many of the nuns they experienced.

Written at a time when women typically entered the convent right out of high school—women who took more years for education or to experience life where not accepted into convents—Father Brooks points out that Jane could not become a nun ten years later.  Today some religious orders discourage women out of high school.  This pamphlet would sell over 36,000 copies by 1930 and over 111,000 by 1963.


Then Lord wrote The Call of Christ for men thinking about becoming priests.  Lord described the call of Jesus rejected by the rich young man but accepted by St. John the fisherman.  However Lord viewed all careers in terms of serving Christ, such as a lawyer who fights for justice and defends the weak.  Interestingly Lord discusses priesthood in terms of order priests who take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.  The more numerous diocesan priests do not take the vow of poverty.

He makes the point that priests, because they give up wealth and family, are freed from all kinds of worries and stresses.  Lord believes the priesthood is a life leading to happiness and links this idea to the gospels: We cannot somehow associate unhappiness with anyone who followed Christ during His years on earth.  Judas the unfaithful was the only unhappy disciple.4

The pamphlet ends with the sales pitch:

You have it in your power to run with the eager steps of the beloved John to the side of Christ.  Like the rich young man you may turn away and leave Him.

Which will you do?5

This pamphlet would sell 65,000 copies by 1930, after that the sales number would drop.


My Friend the Pastor

For his fourth pamphlet My Friend the Pastor, Lord tried a simple story that set up a dialogue on the issue he wanted to discuss.  And Lord could always tell a good story.

On a Friday two men meet in a Pullman railroad car heading for Chicago: Mr. Hutchinson and Tom Floyd.  In the dining car Floyd orders fish.  Hutchinson asks him if he is Catholic.  He is.  Hutchinson is an ex-Catholic, still mad about how a priest had treated him twenty years earlier.  Hutchinson had wanted to marry a Protestant girl.  But the priest refused since she would not agree to raise the children as Catholics.  Hutchinson’s marriage ended after a couple of years and his ex-wife makes it difficult for him to see his kids.

Besides being a warning against mixed marriage, this pamphlet answers some common criticisms made of Catholic priests: they are arrogant; they are always asking for money; their sermons are boring.  Floyd says You see, you and I had forgotten that truth is a lot more important than style; and if we are getting truth, we don’t need to worry about eloquence.6

Floyd talks about his experiences.  His priest, Father Curran, got him to be a server when he was a troubled boy.  Later he told Tom to go to college and got the college to cut tuition and give him a job.  When Floyd wanted to marry a protestant Father Curran got his fiancée to convert.  They are living happily.  Later Father Curran warned him to stay out of a crooked business deal.

Tom Floyd invites Mr. Hutchinson to join his golf game with Father Curran the next day.  At the next train stop Floyd sends a telegram to Father Curran: Wear your golf togs.  Bring Father Ryan.  Will play golf but you have to do some important fishing.  I am furnishing the fish.  Ask St. Peter for help.7

Typical for Lord, he described the ideal priest and avoided the complexities of reality.  Some Catholics might feel cheated that they never had priest as good as Father Curran.  And the truth is that some priests are arrogant and some are boring preachers, regardless of the content or their preaching.  My Friend the Pastor would sell over 35,000 copies in 1927, over 51,000 in 1928 and by 1930 would sell over 114,000 copies.

Boyland and Maidland

Lord created six shows in 1927: Boyland and Maidland, The Magic Gallery, The Making of Miss Graduate, Dame History Turns the Page, Pilate the Governor, and The Call to Peace.

Lord wrote Boyland and Maidland for grade school students, with the first performance at Saint Francis Xavier Parochial School with sets designed by Louis Egan.  The show has two parts: Boyland and Maidland.  Each part includes The Land of Dreams with several scenes, The Land of Dreads, and The Land of Desires.


Synopsis

The show opens with the smallest boy and girl in the school playing grumpy old people complaining about youth.  A wizard enters to show how sweet and lovely children can be.

Boyland

A boy who should be studying dreams of baseball.  In The Land of the Dreams, a squad of players do a pantomime drill of baseball moves.  The boy dreams of movies and sees a Dance of Charlie Chaplins.  Then he dreams of cowboys and the Wild and Wooly Highwaymen enter singing.

We’re very wild and wooly,
   From the wild and wooly West;
We delight in guns and shooting;
   With a lariat we’re best.
You see us in the movies and
    You’d think us very rough;
But when our wives are bossing us
    We’re surely tame enough.8

They are led by General Tabasco Vanilla who speaks to Pedro:

PEDRO: Work?  We Work?  Why did I not become a plumber instead of a highwayman?

GENERAL: Because your conscience forced you to pick the more honest profession.

. . . .

GENERAL: We must stick him [the Sheriff Dalton] with our knives, and drink his blood.

PEDRO: Dalton shall be stuck for the drinks.9

The stage directions describe the Sheriff: Enter Dalton, a very small boy with enormous star, big cigar, three pistols and a dagger.10

Next the boy finds himself in The Land of the Dreads where he is on trial for failing to study and is questioned by A. Rithmatic, and G. O’Graphy.

In The Land of Desires the boy dreams of being President with a Boy Scout troop for his army and the following Cabinet:

Secretary of State—Douglas Fairbanks
Secretary of War—the boxer Gene Tunney
Secretary of the Navy—Babe Ruth
Secretary of Commerce—Jesse James
Secretary of Labor—Weary Willy, a tramp
Post Master General—Santa Claus11

Maidland

Two girls having trouble with their studies dream of a party with dancing.  Then they dream of shopping.  In The Land of Dreads, Cinderella was long ago rescued from her chores and now wants to dance, sing, and laugh.  The kitchen utensils, played by students, no longer recognize her.  When Prince Charming finds out that Cinderella has no interest in housework he leaves.  Cinderella returns to the kitchen to relearn her skills in the hopes that he will one day return.

The final scene tells of girl’s birthday:

Maidenhood today is born.
Sound aloud the golden horn!
Hail the sweet and gentle queen!
Crown her with a silvern sheen.


In Lord published The Magic Gallery as another grade school play.  The play opens with two 2nd graders as adult women viewing a picture gallery.  One woman warns that once a year the ghosts of her ancestors come out from their pictures.  From a large picture frame on stage the various performers appear to do their scenes.


Synopsis

Part I

In the first scene Just After the Civil War, women in hoop skirts enter and dance to period songs from the Blue Danube to Turkey in the Straw.  In the second scene, The Making of the Flag, a woman struggles to make the American flag.  A dance follows including thirteen angels dancing in the stars.

In the third scene the girl Agnes has invited a homeless girl to eat with her and the St. Agnes statue.  Agnes goes without food so the girl can eat.  Agnes has a Stepmother and two Stepsisters.  The Stepsisters come in, throw out the statue, make the girl leave ,and tell Agnes she is ugly.  They put on the gray cloaks and leave for the Duke’s Garden Party.  Agnes retrieves the pieces of the statue: We’ll sit by the fire, we two ugly little things, the ugly Agnes with her ugly broken statue, and let them laugh if they will.12

St. Agnes appears.  Agnes invites St. Agnes to go to the little secret garden of my heart.  A garden appears with a Blue Maiden with the pearl of great price, a White Maiden with the lily that never fades, and a Red Maiden who tends the fire of love.  Agnes appears and looks beautiful.  Dancers with hats that are large flowers enter.  They represent the deed of Agnes: charity, love, service, and hidden sacrifice.

An OLD WITCH appears.  She identifies herself as DISCONTENT with her companion SIN.  The gate is closed on them.  The sisters appear over the wall and taunt Agnes.  They are allowed in, but when they take off their cloaks they are in rags and their faces are dirty.

The DEEDS hold a mirror to them and they are horrified at their appearance.  Their friends appear, see the sisters and mock their ugliness.  The sisters leave in humility and dejection as Agnes puts on her rags and returns to the kitchen.  St. Agnes gives her a new statue and then departs.

Part II (The fun part)

In the first scene, The Pirates Bold, young boys enter as fearsome pirates.  The Cook appears with a pan of donuts.  The pirates react:

For though we think piracy’s a lovely sort of job,
   What ho!  What ho! Beware!
A pantry is the kind of place we much prefer to rob.
   What ho!  What ho! Beware!13

They finally admit:

But piracy is punished with an awful stomach ache.
   What ho!  What ho! Beware!14

The second scene shifts to Columbus aboard the Santa Maria.  The DISCONTENTED SAILOR and NERVOUS SAILOR want to turn back.  Columbus gives a speech and all agree to continue.  Just then, land is sighted.

The clever third scene, Too Fast For Pharaoh, describes the Pharaoh Ramses waking up in 1927 on the streets of St. Louis.

In the final scene the boy WILLIAM has a short wave radio.  His mother tells him to get back to his homework.  Instead he falls asleep and dreams he is in Mexico where his father runs a mine.  The BANDITS attack to get a box of silver.  They break the radio.  During the gun fight WILLIAM fixes the radio to call for AVIATORS who fly in and drive away the BANDITS.  He wakes up.

In his career Lord opposed bigotry.  Even as a child he did not understand why people should be treated differently because of their skin, religion, or ethnicity.  In a few years Lord would write shows directly addressing racism.  Yet Lord was still a product of his times.  This play, written for Catholic grade schools, contains this line in the Pirate scene.  TOM: Does a fish swim, a cat meow, a dog bark, a rose smell sweet, an onion grow strong in the springtime, a nigger shoot craps, and a Ford rattle?

More than anything this line shows how common such language was and how accepted it was by even good, moral, religious people.  It would take a few more years for Lord, and several decades for Americans to realize how offensive such language was.  In 1950 Lord would write an article Song in the Wind where he looked back and lamented the ignorance and lack of sensitivity of an earlier age.15


Lord published The Making of Miss Graduate to be performed as part of the graduation celebration at a Catholic woman’s college.16  The best scene is The Unmaking of Miss Graduate with the ghosts who haunt the school distracting Miss Graduate: Ghost of Athletics, Ghost of Radio, Cross-Word Ghost, Dieting Ghost, Ghost of Midnight Suppers, Ghost of Wasted Hours, and Ghost of Jazz.


Lord wrote Dame History Turns the Page to be performed by Nerinx Hall, a high school run by the Sisters of Loretto in Webster Groves outside of St. Louis.  This short twelve page script is a play in which Dame History is writing the history of Nerinx’ 1927 Class as her Page calls in the different reporters: City Editor, Athletic Editor, Gossip Editor and Religious Editor.  For the prophecy of the future the girls of Nerinx are warned that they only together with God can shape that.17

Pilate the Governor: The Story of a Storm Swept Soul

Daniel Lord wrote Pilate the Governor: The Story of a Storm Swept Soul to be produced by The Loyola Community Theatre in Chicago led by Lord’s friend FitzGeorge Dinneen, S.J.  A fictionalized and romanticized account of Pilate’s role in the crucifixion of Jesus, this is one of many attempts by writers to build stories beyond the biblical accounts of the passion.  For example, Pär Lagerkvist would later write the 1950 novel, Barabbas, which had several film treatments.

Little is known about Pontius Pilate outside of his mention in the gospels.  In the historical appearance of Jesus before Pilate no followers of Jesus would have been present.  Therefore, the gospel versions are creations of the gospel writers.  In reality, Pontius Pilate was a Roman governor in the harsh and brutal Roman military/political system.  He would eventually be recalled to Rome for being too harsh by Roman standards!

To think that in deciding to execute Jesus, Pilate attempted to protect an innocent man goes against all that is known about Pilate and Roman attitudes.  Very likely, the gospel attempts to downplay the responsibility of Pilate had to do with making the gospel story palatable to future Christian audiences in the Roman world.

However, this historical background can be ignored for the moment.  Here is Daniel Lord’s play.


Act I: Palm Sunday: Pilate’s Judgment Seat

News arrives of unrest in the city.  Pilate sends soldiers.  Pilate and Lady Procula—a loving husband and wife—discuss Jerusalem.  She wants him to give up politics and retire to a villa.  Procula knows Jesus.  From the Balcony they hear the arrival of Jesus.  They exit.

Peter, Judas, and John climb up on the balcony to get a better view.  Judas thinks Jesus is coming to claim political power and glory.

Next Lady Procula and Mary Magdalen speak.  Mary asks her to plead the case of Jesus if he comes before Pilate.


ACT II: Palm Sunday in the Temple

PILATE: Your temple looks much more like the bazaars of Alexandria than the house of your God.18  Caiaphas positions his guards to arrest Jesus then exits.  Pilate sees Jesus enter the temple.  Pilate is sympathetic as he listens to the offstage scene of Caiaphas trying to trap Jesus in a question over authority.

Judas had expected Jesus to be crowned, but Jesus had said his kingdom was not of this world.  Caiaphas and others enter to plot against Jesus.  Judas offers to help them because Jesus lied about the Kingdom.  They will pay Judas 30 pieces of silver.


ACT III: Good Friday

The act opens with Roman soldiers and a drunken Temple Guard (for comic relief).  A messenger tells Pilate that Caiaphas is coming to ask for the execution of Jesus.  Procula tells Pilate of her dreams.  Pilate plans to free the innocent Jesus.  Caiaphas enters.  Pilate criticizes him: Why, if any man has ever in Rome’s history hated the Roman taxes, fought the Roman tribute, stirred up the people against Rome, that man is yourself.19

The trial of Jesus takes place.  Jesus is not seen on stage; a guard holds a rope that leads offstage.  Judas appears and pleads to Caiaphas that he has done wrong.  Caiaphas stirs up the crowds to force his Pilate’s hand.  Jesus is taken to Herod.

Procula talks to Pilate.  Pilate assumes that Herod will release Jesus and his career will be protected.  However the crowd brings Jesus back.

Judas appeals for Jesus.

JUDAS (rising in a single powerful moment):  Justice had better be done.  Pilate, I warn you!  In my soul burn the fires of Hell — the fires of remorse.  Release him, or someday those fires will burn your soul and drive you on as they are driving me to the halter, the outstretched oak limb, and welcoming death.20

Judas is taken away.

Pilate orders the scourging of Jesus.  Caiaphas tells a priest to stir up the crowd to demand crucifixion.

Worried about the mob, Pilate brings out Barabbas and offers to set one prisoner free.  Caiaphas pressures him to order the crucifixion of Jesus.

PROCULA (quietly):  You could have been the savior of the world’s savior.  You could have been next to Him, history’s bravest, greatest man.21


ACT IV: The Dawn of Easter Sunday

At the tomb, a troubled and guilty Pilate enters.  PILATE: He sleeps so calmly after the rush and turmoil of life.  I gave him that sleep, and he has taken mine.22

Judas enters with rope in hand: JUDAS: My hot kiss searing his face has kindled for me the flames of Hell.23  He exits.

MARY MAGDALEN tells Pilate that Jesus will forgive him.  He exits.  Then a rumble of thunder is heard.  Light comes from the tomb.  The guards fall down.

MARY MAGDALEN:  Rabonni!  My Master!

Curtain falls with all possible speed.24

The Call to Peace

The Call to Peace is a banquet demonstration for The League of Nations Association where the speaker is interrupted.

Synopsis

An audience OBJECTOR says the League is Bunk.  We all know that the League is a failure and that it can’t and won’t work, we are bloodthirsty cutthroats hungry for war.25  A woman, LEAGUE, appears.

Various scenes are illuminated around the room: a nativity scene, Gladiators fighting, and then a Christian emperor banning Gladiatorial fights. Barbarian warriors fight until the Pope announces the Peace of God to limit warfare.

LEAGUE introduces her heroes: an artist, a scientist, a nurse, and an educator.  LEAGUE: And then comes War, War that we hate and fear, War the destroyer, the bitter, ruthless foe, and look!  Soldiers enter to a Bugle Call.

An Officer speaks: Serve me, scientist to kill men.  Give me a potion that will slay my enemies.  Give me a gas so powerful that it will wipe out whole cities.  Give me a death ray that will wither regiments like dry grass before hot flames.26

A NEWSBOY enters Extra!  Extra!  War is declared.27  The Soldiers call the young people to follow.  The League calls on her allies: a Mother with a boy and girl about 12 years old.  Here is my son and here my daughter.  The next war will sweep then into the bitter hell of battle.28  [A 12 year old boy in 1927 would be 26—draft age—in 1941 when the US entered World War II.]

The Educator talks about the schools and hospitals that could be built with the money spent on armaments.  The Scientist pleads, Let me make of science the slave and servant of mankind, not its brutal tyrant and gigantic destroyer.29

WAR enters with his Companions: HATRED, FAMINE, WASTE, and DEATH.  Sweet death.  Don’t shrink from him, my friends; he is the dear familiar of your boys who march out to battle.30

Now the OBJECTOR does not want war.  Who will stop War?  LEAGUE summons the nations and from all doors men, women, and children come with flags of all nations.

WAR points out that America is not among them.  The OBJECTOR cries Yes, but not for long, grabs an American flag and joins the other nations, declaring: proudly we bring our strength and courage, our high idealism, our love of all mankind, to serve united humanity and you, League of Nations.31



NOTES



Chapter 10    Chapter 12

  

Copyright 2021 Stephen Werner