First, a potpourri of religion in the week’s news, as reported by Associated and United Press agencies:
Throughout the U.S. churches are observing harvest festivals. For Protestant churches, an order of service to give thanks for the rich bounty of the earth has been written by the Rev. Deanne Edwards of New York City, a minister of the Reformed Church and director of the Hymn Society of America. The department of the Town and Country Church of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. has given wide distribution to the services. Many churches will be decorated with vegetable, fruits, and flowers typical of the season, which later – the decorations not the season – will go to charitable institutions or needy persons.
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A report by the National 4-H Club Foundation and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith tells, among other things, how visiting American farm youths have been impressed by Israel’s religious life. B’nai B’rith, a Jewish men’s group, says all faiths in the new nation have constitutional freedom of worship. It adds that U.S. members of the International Farm Youth Exchange found the two most important Jewish religious holidays most impressive in their rituals. These ceremonials are Rosh Hashanah, the religious New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. But the young Americans got a particular sentiment out of Succoth, the Feast of the Tabernacles. This is the Jewish celebration of the harvest. One exchange, Carol Jenkins of Shelby County, Missouri, says it seemed a wonderful way for farmers, either Jewish or Christian, to celebrate Thanksgiving.
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Today, Roman Catholic lawyers in New York City will have their annual Red Mass. Francis Cardinal Spellman will preside at the solemn pontifical votive Mass of the Holy Ghost at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The Red Mass has been celebrated for centuries in great European cities. For as long as church history has been recorded, the service officially has opened the judicial year of the sacred Roman Rota. It was first celebrated in the U.S. in New York about 25 years ago. The name Red Mass probably derives from the color of the vestments worn by the celebrant and other priests at the Mass. And that, in turn, goes back to the fact that judicial robes used to be bright red or scarlet.
Cardinal Spellman will also lead some 60,000 persons in prayer at a religious service at New York’s polo grounds today. That will be part of the ceremony marking the 80th birthday of Pope Pius XII. The New York Archdiocesan Union of the Holy Name is sponsoring the commemoration. Birthday medals blessed by the pontiff and flown from Italy to New York early this week are to be presented to each attendant at the services.
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Washington: White members of a Lutheran church have set out on a unique doorbell ringing campaign. Their objective is to bring Negro families into the congregation. The Augustana Lutheran Church is the first to undertake a formal solicitation of Negro members to implement the open door policy that many churches have proclaimed in the last few years.
And at Blue Island, Illinois, the American Lutheran Church, at its 14th Biennial Convention, has adopted a statement of policy on responsibility of its ministers to their entire neighborhood regardless of race. The statement was adopted by almost unanimous agreement of both clerical and lay delegates to the convention.
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Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, of New Rochelle, New York, has been reelected to a seventh term as president of the United Lutheran Church in America. Dr. Fry has served as head of the largest Lutheran group in North America for six two-year terms. His latest election is for a six-year term.
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Vatican City: Monsignor Lorenzo Perosi, conductor of the papal choir and a world-famous composer, is seriously ill. Vatican sources say Monsignor Perosi has been given the last rites of the church, and the pope has sent him a special blessing. He is 83 years old.
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Montreal, Canada: The Roman Catholic Church has announced that Catholics in the Montreal Diocese will be allowed to work all but two holy days a year, effective next month. The exceptions will be Christmas Day and the Feast of the Circumcision, January 1. A statement issued by the archbishop of Montreal says the change has been approved by the Vatican.
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St. Paul, Minnesota: Death has taken Archbishop John Gregory Murray, leader of 435,000 Roman Catholics in the St. Paul Diocese. The 79-year-old prelate succumbed to cancer of the neck. He also had suffered a heart attack two months ago and a stroke a month ago, which had affected the right side of his body. Archbishop Murray’s duties have been assumed by Archbishop William O. Brady, who recently came to St. Paul from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
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New York: Protestant churches across the U.S. and Canada observe Church Men’s Week, starting today and extending through next Sunday, October 21. Today is recognized as Men and Missions Sunday, which, since 1931, has helped to dramatize the churchman and his relationship to worldwide Christian missions. Laymen’s Sunday, October 21, is the annual occasion when laymen take over the entire Sunday morning worship services, including the sermon.
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Cairo, Egypt: International scholars at the Coptic Museum in Cairo are translating a manuscript that may be a fifth gospel. The author may be the apostle Thomas (or doubting Thomas). The manuscript is written in the ancient Coptic language and is believed to date back to the third or fourth century. It is part of 13 volumes containing 48 books which Egyptian workmen found in a jar while digging in a cemetery in 1945.
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The United Lutheran Church in America has opened its doors for women to give full time service to the church, without planning a lifetime career. Women who so desire may join with the U.L.C Deaconesses to do such work indefinitely. The change has been approved as an experiment. The new members of the church’s women’s religious order will be called “diaconic volunteers,” rather than “deaconesses.” They will receive maintenance and a small allowance during their periods of service. As do the Lutheran deaconesses, the volunteers will serve churches in various capacities, such as teachers, nurses, parish and social workers.
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During the past week the Supreme Court let stand a lower court decision barring Virginia from leasing a state park under any plan that might result against Negroes. This decision – or lack of decision on the part of the high court – may have far-reaching implications for the states that have hurriedly, and emotionally, rushed through constitutional amendments, legislative statutes, etc., aimed at turning their public schools over to private organizations in order to prevent the carrying out of desegregation decisions. The lower court decision was by U.S. District Judge Walter E. Hoffman of Norfolk. It was appealed to the high tribunal after the U.S. Circuit Court in Richmond upheld Judge Hoffman. Hoffman decided that the state, in operating the Seashore State Park, must permit all races to use it. He said if the park were leased, “The lease must not, directly or indirectly, operate so as to discriminate against the members of any race.
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Looking at this whole question of desegregation, objectively and dispassionately, it is a matter, not only of curiosity but of deep concern also, of wondering why all the fuss. Today our Sunday school lesson is based on a study of the Ten Commandments. The principles of justice in these laws underlie our whole sense of justice in the democratic social orders of the Western world. Exodus does not mention in these commandments any exception on the basis of race or anything else from the binding force of these principles. How, then, can we say, and be honest with ourselves, that while these commandments apply to all people, they apply a little more to some than others? Is it true that we, along with Jefferson, hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal? But then, with tongues in our cheeks, … that some of us are created a little more equal than others because of race? The whole question boils itself down into just such a simple principle, though admittedly the problem is, socially, a complex one.
One of the things we see materials about and hear a great deal said on these days is “What of the younger generation today?” Well, any statement on such a subject means that its maker is certainly sticking his neck out. However, it is a matter about which we are all concerned, and I venture to suggest that the following characteristics might well be applied to a goodly portion of the thoughtful members of today’s young generation. First of all, they are something of a skeptical generation, one that wants faith, but finds it very hard to achieve an ardent faith honestly. One student remarked not long ago, “I don’t believe in anything, and I don’t know how to go about starting.” This is a not an uncommon predicament. Again, in many respects, it is a lonely generation, hungering for a warm community dedicated to a common cause, but hardly knowing where to find such a community. It is something of a timid generation, more preoccupied with security than with adventure. And when faced with danger, it faces it with stoic fortitude rather than with courage. And, last, it is not a happy generation; in some respects it is something of a joyless crowd. Of course, it throws itself into distraction in order to distract itself from its unhappiness, but there is little of security there.
Well, there is a venture into trying to state something of mass impression of a very important portion of our people. Probably much the same thing has been said about previous generations. Whatever truth lies in the above statements can probably be traced more to the uncertainty of the times, the tensions of today’s living, tensions which the younger generation did not create but among which they must live, than any unsteadiness in the young people themselves. In many ways we of the older generation have cheated today’s young people in not building a world in which such elements that give rise to personal and social disorganization are absent instead of very much present.
Fundamental to a basic religious philosophy is the question,“What can I believe in religion?” In our Christian culture, this means engaging in the study and practice of religion, which, in turn, means an examination of the claims of historic Christianity. Without such examination, people will not get far in answering their basic question. Christian orthodoxy means the evolving changing doctrines of Paul, the early church fathers, the school men, the reformers, the post-Reformation theologians, and theology as it has been presented and is being presented today. One cannot discuss – I doubt if one can think intelligently – of religion without discussing the claims of religion, anymore than he can discuss chemistry without knowing something of the claims of chemistry. It was Christ who said, “Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are which testify of me.” You don’t get religion like you do measles. Religion is natural, native, and intrinsic.
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The best quote of the week that I came across, and one which has survival as well as religious interest goes like this: “The men of big business have been so busy preparing for a war which they hope to avert that they seem to have neglected almost altogether planning for the peace they hope to achieve.”
And another, almost as good, says that when the government does something for you, that’s social progress. But when it does something for someone else, that’s socialism. How lazy can we get through the use of words and phrases, slogans that mean nothing or everything, and which very effectively lull us away from any effort to do real thinking for ourselves?