EXTRA MATERIAL
Chapter Twenty-three - 1942-1943
The War and Ourselves and
The Great Vocation of Our Time
Pamphlets of 1942
Christ or Barabbas?
The Christmas Lamb
Divorce: A Picture from the Headlines
In Praise of Fathers
Money Runs or Ruins the Home
Of Course We Don’t Mean You
A Salute to the Men in the Service
War and Ourselves
Lord wrote Christ of Barabbas?: Philo, Secretary of Pontius Pilate, Retells to his Grandchildren the Story of Eternal Choice. The cover of the pamphlet is a photo of the scene in The King of Kings with Pilate in the center and Jesus on his left and Barabbas on his right.
In this pamphlet Lord takes the events around the trial and crucifixion of Jesus and retells them from the perspective of Philo, an eyewitness to what happened. In the end Philo asks:
My children, what is the choice you will make now and at it every blistering moment to temptation?
Christ or Barabbas?
Life or death,
Sin the murderer or the faith and love that makes men free?1
For years Daniel Lord had been collecting newspaper clippings of divorce stories and keeping them in drawer. For Divorce: A Picture From the Headlines he opened the drawer and gave a sample of sad, tragic, humorous, bizarre, and head-scratching examples. We don’t enjoy facing national calamities. And divorce is such a calamity, doleful and terrifying. It is a national tragedy on a large scale. If it were not sad, it would often be a hilarious.
2
Lord gives the statistics on the increase of divorce over the decades topping at 18 divorces for every 100 marriage in 1940. In later reprints he added the 1948 rate of 22.8 for every 100. What would Lord think of current stats?
Lord gives a panoply of stories of unknowns and famous names. He even mentions the divorce of Thomas Manville, the asbestos heir. At the time asbestos was seen as a fire-proof miracle material that had hundreds of uses. Today, many people only know about asbestos because of lawyer ads on cable TV looking for Mesothelioma victims.
Of Course We Don’t Mean You is a collection of charming short two-page parables. One story tells of an African American who gets asked to leave a white Catholic Church. He exits and is then welcomed by a communist organizer, Hello, Comrade.
Another story, Make Way for the Lady,
tells of a crowd of admirers and press waiting at a train. An elderly nun who has built three orphanages, five hospitals, two social centers, and a vast education system steps off the train. She is ignored as the crowd rushes to see the movie star going to Reno for a divorce.
The War and Ourselves
Lord wrote The War and Ourselves in the weeks after Pearl Harbor to show his support for the war effort. He reviews the meaning of World War I and the failure of Americans to be responsible after the war. Instead many people decided, Let’s Boot God’s Commandments
He once again thinks of Joyce Kilmer’s attitude to war:
Yet as I write, I am thinking of Joyce Kilmer crouched in a trench in France and writing home those beautiful letters which were, even during that era of postwar cynicism, an inspiration to thousands of young men and women. They were letters shot through with the intense love of his charming poet wife and those almost legendary children; yet they all echoed in modern phraseology the famous ideal that he could not love them near so much loved he not honor more. He simply had to defend his country and the right. The sacrificial duty, to his mind transcended all other obligations.3
Had Lord read Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front? which paints a very different picture of trench life. In World War I, although American shipping was attacked, America itself was not attacked. Ironically, Lord’s example points out the horror of war: a noble man dies leaving his wife a widow and his children without a father. Also it is hard to show what is the right
that was accomplished in the end by the war. Lord himself would often compare the actual results of World War I to the high ideals for which it was fought.
Lord talks about Catholic Church teaching that recognizes that Just Wars exist. Lord assumes the current war is a just one. Lord even talks about the benefits of war such technological development and the fact the Virtues Do Spring.
Yes; war can make a man brutal. We were repeatedly told what happened to some already warped characters when we gave them a gun. Yet during war many a hitherto selfish young fellow learns an unselfishness of which he never dreamed himself capable. True, out of wars have come broke bodies and twisted minds. Yet out of wars came the Red Cross. Many a fellow with cowardice in his fiber has learned to be a hero. Many a man, self-centered and unfriendly, has learned comradeship that knit him to his fellows in enduring love. Disorderly lives have mastered discipline. Rank, untrammeled wills have grown orderly in obedience. And leadership does develop in the most unexpected and unprepossessing characters.4
Of course Lord emphasizes the importance of religion. We must fight because we love our own country, not because we hate any other country.
5 But according to Lord, most importantly we must also love God.
In Praise of Fathers begins by recognizing the plethora of songs about mothers and the dearth of songs about fathers. Much of the pamphlet describes what a reader might expect: the different stages of being a father, the different roles he plays, the shifting attitudes of children to their fathers, and of course a call for respect and praise for fathers.
Lord talks about his own father, George. Regretting he did not give his father enough attention in life, this pamphlet becomes a tribute to his father.
A Salute to the Men in Service
Lord wrote A Salute to the Men in Service in 1942 as the American war effort shifted in to high gear. The original version is hard to find. The later versions from the 1950s include references to the Korean War and the fight against communism. The original version became Lord’s most produced pamphlet. He gave away a million and a half copies, and then: When the USO came across the booklet that we had developed for the young draftees of World War II, they circulated around four million copies of that one khaki-covered booklet.
6
Lord begins: You and I love America because for us Catholics it’s meant a land of liberty and religious freedom. We are mighty proud that our Catholic Lord Baltimore was the first man in America to grant religious freedom.
7 Lord lays out the principles for which men in service are fighting:
We believe that God is the creator of our country and the guarantor of the freedom of our Constitution.
. . .
We are convinced that man has a right to justice, even when he isn’t strong enough or smart enough or big enough to enforce or demand or grab it.
We think that minorities have rights and we must protect them.
. . .
We’ve got an idea that Christ’s law of love is to be expressed in charity toward one’s fellow man, and in the care of the sick and the week, and protection of the defenseless.8
As noted before, Lord had an idealistic view on war as again he refers to the example of Joyce Kilmer. Lord considers the difficulty of military service under the section Suffering With Christ.
Lord then focuses on the behavior of men in the service because war is often used as an excuse for sinning.
Men in the service go off for abinge,waste their pay in a single night, come back with a roaring headache and a tongue like the floor of a skunk’s cage, with sick memories of low people and loose girls and acts they hope to high heaven their mothers will never hear about, and then brag,Oh boy, did we have fun!9
In the section Drink
Lord notes, Remember that the habit of drinking developed in the service will not be lost later on.
10
One section is called The Treason of Mortal Sin.
In Stay in the State of Christ
Lord argues:
But here’s the Catholic chap who takes his buddy out for an evening, and thanks to him, they both come back in the state of mortal sin. The next day the buddy crashes to death. How can that Catholic chap live on, remembering that he is responsible for plunging his friend into eternal death? How can you look at himself knowing that he helped send his friend to hell?11
In the section The Girls
Lord speaks out against the mistreatment of women by men in the military.
But what precise difference is there between a Red soldier forcing himself on a girl and an American soldier forcing himself on a girl?
What’s the essential difference between one of the enemy laying siege to a virgin and a boy in American uniform begging and pleading with the girl to give him her purity?12
The pamphlet encourages moral and religious behavior in the sections Letters Homes,
Your Catholic Chaplain,
and Mass in the Camp or Aboard Ship.
Lord ends the pamphlet:
Fight bravely and live splendidly.
Then come back to help us remake the world.
Christ waits for that.
In your hands will be the building of the City of God.13
The ISO Meeting in 1943: Why West Baden, Indiana?
Two grand hotels stand in French Lick, Indiana: the Sheraton and the West Baden Hotel. The latter is a magnificent circular hotel with an open atrium in the middle with a dome. When built during prohibition, it was the largest dome since the Pantheon. Gambling was its draw. When the hotel closed the property was sold to the Jesuits, then eventually turned over to an historical society, then bought and restored as a hotel. The property still has Jesuit graves.
Pamphlets of 1943
Don’t Swear Like That!
How to Write a Letter
The Man the Savior Praised: St. John the Baptist
The Music of Christmas Time, The Joyous Songs of Christmas
That Story of Adam and Eve
More Lord Quotes From Don’t Swear Like That
Lord notes the irony of non-religious people who use religious terms for swearing. He notes:
A man finds one thingdamn funnyand anotherdamn sad.. . . Even damn is incorrect. If he knew anything, he’d at least use the participle damned and not the verb damn.14
Since the modern world has gone so pagan anyhow, why not a new order of swearing?
By Neptune, I’ll get that submarine!
Holy Icarus, look at that fellow fly!
Suffering Sisyphus, I’m tired!
Big bulls of Bashan, I’m drunk!15
Lord also wrote The Man the Savior Praised: St. John the Baptist. The Summary of the pamphlet states:
A biblical superman who drew thousands to the desert that was his home . . . forerunner and background for the divine Christ . . . afoolwho stood before a king and openly accused him of his crimes . . . meriting from Christ the greatest praise he ever gave to a man . . . what manner of man was he, this John the Baptist?16
Daniel Lord’s Letter on Peace
Sometime during this period Lord wrote a letter to a seminarian giving his thoughts on war.
Christ was for peace to such an extent that in my search of Scripture I could not find a single instance in which He justified lethal violence.
The more I ran bang-smack into His counsels, whether they be commands or not—of turning the other cheek, of loving one’s enemies, of doing good to those who harmed one—the more it seemed to me that we priests and religious had followed the right course.
I confess that it meant something very real to me. If tomorrow our government were to order me, as a priest, to bear arms, I am afraid I would have to go to prison. I do not see what else I could do, but refuse to kill anyone. Maybe that is part of my reluctance to take even the life of a bird. Possibly I’m just sentimental and a sissy. But I couldn’t turn a gun on an enemy, and if I were forced into the army, I’m inclined to think that I’d just walk forward until I was shot and let it go at that.
. . .
I was fascinated by the question of what would have happened to the world if men, instead of sticking to their just rights, had stuck with Christ’s love and charity. Would we have been a much more potent force had we followed the Benedictines instead of the Crusaders?
. . . I could not conceive of Christ bearing arms any more than I could conceive of Him waging a lawsuit.
. . .
I could not conceive of Francis of Assisi doing other than what he did—throwing away his uniform and conducting his own private crusade as a friar.
Practically, I was and am sure that there are ways of defending our country incomparably better than fighting for it. Why haven’t we had the courage to try these on a large scale?
. . .
In the course of the Christian era the State has ordered men out to war hundreds of times. Churchmen have almost always said,
This is a just war, go ahead.So they went. But what happened to the world? War begot war, war without end, just, of course—yet with Italian bishops blessing the Fascist armies and praying for victory. Suppose that Churchmen had encouraged men to follow the counsels and live at peace. Suppose we had sent armies of missionaries instead of Crusaders.. . .
How about giving peace a break? War hasn’t succeeded. It has brought us to this horrible climax of all wars. Maybe Christ did mean what He said.
I hope and pray our country wins. I am proud that men love it unto death. But I keep thinking:
In the past what good?
In the future what hope from it?17
How about giving peace a break?
reminds one of the John Lennon lyric: All we are saying is ‘Give peace a chance.’
Lord views on war were complicated: he struggled over the moral issues. Had Lord lived through the Viet Nam era would his views have developed even more?
The Catholic World of Daniel Lord
That Daniel Lord had friction with some bishops should not be surprising. Daniel Lord was moving into a broader world that many bishops found alien. One need only look at seminary training to get a sense of the gap in awareness. Many priests were trained in monastic settings isolated from the people of the cities, in particular woman, with whom they would later have to work. The example of Kenrick Seminary outside of St. Louis is typical. The old Kenrick building is now nestled among subdivisions. When built it was in the country, surrounded by hundreds acres of trees. The chapel is built in a medieval monastery style with choir seating of pews facing the center aisle.
Also the Catholic Church in Lord’s time was incredible legalistic. The church had all kinds of rules about every detail of church life and every moral issue. Catholics were required to fast from midnight until mass. Hence early masses were more popular.
Questions such as Can I use a cough drop before mass and not break the fast?
or If I swallow a snowflake do I break the communion fast?
or If a piece of food caught between my teeth comes loose and I swallow it, does that break the fast?
were considered legitimate. (The answer is no
to all three.) Anyone old enough to remember the pre-Vatican Catholic Church can remember the focus on rules.
One need only look at the small book Moral Theology by Heribert Jone and Urban Adelman to see the many rules. For example, the fast for communion started at true midnight, not clock time. Due to time zones, true midnight can be different from clock midnight. So Moral Theology contained a chart for major American cities that told how many minutes true midnight took place before or after clock midnight for those who wanted to eat right up to the deadline.
Many bishops were into rules. How could one rise in a rule-bound organization without a great concern for the rules? Perhaps the biggest positive effect of Vatican II, and the spirit of Vatican II, was to move away from legalism. Sadly there are some priests and bishops who seem to want to go back to it. Some who dream of pre-Vatican II days seem to be unaware of the legalistic spirit of those times.
Also, an over emphasis on rules ignores that the fact that Jesus was not critical of sinners: he forgave them. He was most critical of religious legalists such as many of the Pharisees described in the gospels. The attraction of legalism is the thinking that If I can just know the rules and diligently follow them then I know I am right with God.
In Lord’s time confession was very popular, especially on Saturday afternoon. There was no Saturday evening mass. In many churches several priest spent several hours hearing the confessions of parishioners who would stand in line to go to confession. Many Catholics went every week. They felt they had to, although many of these devout Catholics lead such moral lives that it is hard to imagine that they would have sins to confess every week.
Also being a bishop is about running a diocese. In big cities he is called an archbishop who runs an archdiocese. The diocese is their turf and many bishops, archbishops, and cardinals have been very protective and possessive of the turfs. Also one must keep in the mind the typical Catholic attitude of that day that only the Catholic faith was the true way to heaven. Attitudes varied about whether Protestants could get to heaven but most felt that even if Protestants could get to heaven they were going about it the wrong way. So for many bishops it was very important to control true Christianity in their dioceses. Any rival approach was suspect. A Jesuit with a new and different program from a different city could be suspect. Control was important for some bishops. Lord went out of his way to always work under the approval of local bishops and was frustrated by fellow Jesuits who did not exercise similar respect and practical caution.
One of the factors in explaining the eventual decline of the Sodality movement was the desire of bishops to run their own programs such the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO, later the CYC) for students and the Holy Name Society for parishioners. As noted earlier, Lord played a role in the development of the CYO. However the shift in focus of the Queen’s Work that would play out in the next years would be the greater factor in the decline of the Sodality movement.
Lord and his Sodality would be eventually banned from over a half dozen dioceses. Some would ban Lord from speaking and doing his shows or ban the use of his songs. That is the bad news; the good news was that far more bishops were welcoming and encouraging of Lord and his Sodality.
Lord had a more open and aware attitude on the role of women in the church than did many other clergy. Many priests had little contact with women during the training. Many entered all male high school seminaries and then went on to college and graduate seminaries. A similar situation existed for nuns and sisters. Many entered the convent out of high school and were isolated in the schooling and later work.
Lord was different. In his role as head of the Queen’s Work he came in contact with tens of thousands of young men and women. He was corresponding with thousands of them. They were talking about their lives and their issues. He had contact with many, many nuns.
Countless women were influenced to become sisters because of Lord’s talks, pamphlets, and correspondence. Also Lord’s way of thinking big was infectious to those who were open to it. Many sisters, influenced by Lord, started thinking big themselves. Many became leaders in their orders and began to see new possibilities. Many such women were visionary and energetic and believed in their role in the Catholic Church. Such empowered women would scare the bejesus out of many bishops.
Lastly, the friction Lord encountered shows the wisdom of the saying of Dale Carnegie: Nobody kicks a dead dog
which means that if you try to do something you will find opposition. If you get no opposition you are either very lucky or more likely you are not doing anything.
A Story Told by Daniel Lord
Social Class
Social distinctions sometimes lead to the kind of sharp repartee that was current in Rome and that is current in New York today.
In the tramcar (and tramcars are everywhere) poled two Negro women. One was clearly from the upper stratum; the other was clearly from a distinctly lower level. The lady from the lower level regarded her better-positioned sister with withering sarcasm.
You in a tramcar?she sneered.Where’s your motorcar?The other from her superior altitude returned the shot:
You in a tramcar? Where’s your jackass?18
NOTES
- 1 Ibid., 40.
- 2 Lord, Divorce: A Picture From the Headlines (QW, 1942), 2.
- 3 Lord, The War and Ourselves (QW, 1942), 19.
- 4 Ibid., 14.
- 5 Ibid., 35.
- 6 Played by Ear, 333. See Gavin, 130.
- 7 Lord, A Salute to the Men in Service (QW, 1942), 5.
- 8 Ibid., 7.
- 9 Ibid., 30.
- 10 Ibid., 38.
- 11 Ibid., 26.
- 12 Ibid., 35.
- 13 Ibid., 40.
- 14 Lord, Don’t Swear Like Tha (QW, 1943), 13.
- 15 Ibid., 33.
- 16 Lord, The Man the Savior Praised (QW, 1943), inside front cover.
- 17 Gavin, 127-129.
- 18 That Made Me Smile, 131.
Copyright 2021 Stephen Werner