ing, music and the theater, and the pleasures of what they called by a euphemism "love," were the supreme wisdom. Cicero taught that pride was the highest virtue; that a good man was better than God, that to fear God would be insanity; that gluttony was no vice, that unnatural crime was justifiable; that prayer is meaningless and useless. And they all-Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Cato, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, taught that when life became a burden, suicide was a right and a duty. of the coming of the Babe of Bethlehem. Charity, for example, came into the world only with Christ. Before Him, meekness and kindness, mercy and pity were held to be blemishes in the character of any man. The perfect pagan type was the man who boasted on his deathbed that no one had ever been more pitiless to his enemies than he. But I must not commence again, on that topic. I am but dashing off a few paragraphs-not attempting a treatise on what the coming of Our Savior has meant to mankind. That book, or series of books, should be written. It would make a noble encyclopedia. Meanwhile, let us avoid a too facile cynicism which would lead us to make smart sayings about the world's being now and always pagan. To do so is to belie history and to dishonor the meek and humble re-Creator of the The Lon Perhaps a religious lie has a particularly abnormal vitality. But any lie dies hard, especially if it be picturesque, or sensational, or funny. gevity of a Lie. Perhaps indeed, the lie that is also a joke lives longest of all. Here is Sir John Foster Frazer, a wellknown British journalist, publishing a long mocking article about the visit of Queen Marie of Roumania to America. He says, "When Queen Marie stood on the steps of City Hall, gazing at the ninety-eight stories of the Woolworth Building, and made the customary remark, did the Mayoress repeat the historic observation of Mrs. Hylan to the Queen of the Belgians, 'Queen, you've said a mouthful' "? Of course she did, and all future mayoresses to the end of time will say it, just as Louis XIV. will keep on saying, "L'état c'est moi," and Galileo e pur se muove, until the crack of doom. Sober-sided historians may prove that these stories are, one and all, legends. But what does your professional funny fellow care for the actual historical truth? Let's have our picturesque little lie, now and forever. Amen. IR JOHN'S article, though reck Siess in the matter of what he calls an "historical observation," is pretty good fun, and no doubt we ought to thank him for giving us a good laugh, even though the laugh is on ourselves. He says "the Amer Do We Dearly Love a Queen? icans really must get a king and THE saying "All roads lead to queen of their own. They can no longer 'bunco' themselves with chewing gum kings, soap kings, movie kings and cigar kings." He says we hanker after the original article, and that's why we are "crazy" about Queen Marie. He wrote at the beginning of her visit. If he had waited a week, he might have discovered that, dumb as we are, we quickly "got wise to" Marie. She has become a boon to the hard pressed boys who write "colyums" and have to think up something funny every day. Doubtless they have gone too far. Idolaters only too readily become merciless iconoclasts. In the But let's not spoil Sir John's fun. He runs on: "I am a most dutiful subject, but I confess I do not know the color of the king's pajamas. All Americans probably know. That is what they like to know." current vernacular "there is dirt in that remark." But perhaps we deserve it, for he says, "far more appears in the American Sunday papers about King George and the royal family than in our own." Maybe, but on the other hand, an English crowd is said to welcome Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford with more hysterical enthusiasm than an American crowd. depends on what you're used to Consueta vilescunt. It So Sir John Frazer should make allowances for our frenzy over Queen Marie. We've had only two Queens in a good many years, perhaps a century. If they get into the habit of coming over, pretty soon we shall give them no more attention than royalty receives in London. Rome," was true in ancient days. To-day all roads lead to America. One of our native humorists has said that the chief advantage of living in Europe is that European lecturers go to America to work-and to reap. I confess that I used to misunderstand this hegira to "the states." Formerly I thought that we reached out across the sea with our long arm and dragged the lecturers, and the opera singers, the actors and actresses over here. If there was a baritone in Russia who could sing the Volga Boatman's song better than anyone of our own, we stretched our hand over sea and land and took him to ourselves. If there was a tenor in Ireland who could sing the old folk songs more appealingly than any Irish-American, we laid hands on him, dragged him through our gates and compelled him to settle down in our midst. If there was a coloratura soprano in Italy who could do musical pyrotechnics more daringly than our native daughters, we stole her away from La Scala. If there was a company of actors in Moscow, or a diseuse in Paris or in Madrid, whom we thought we should see and hear, we coaxed them to come, and, as the "go-getter" explained to them, "we will make it worth your while." But I have grown skeptical about this explanation. We may indeed have an insatiable hunger and thirst for foreign celebrities. But I am commencing to suspect that we really didn't need to go after them as the cave man went after his wife. We don't have to knock them unconscious, and then drag them through our gates by the hair of the head. Some of them even come without any urgent invitation. For example, who sent for this latest oriental curiosity, Krishnamurti? Mrs. Besant calls him "the mouthpiece of God." And more than that: He is, in the wild fancy of the Besantines (if not of all theosophists), the incarnation of the Deity. In the Hindu mythology, Krishna is one of the Avatars (incarnations) of Vishnu, a god. Blasphemously, these modern oriental heathens say that Jesus was another incarnation of the same god, and that in the young man, Krishnamurti, now sojourning in the United States, we have still another incarnation. However, his duties as mouthpiece of God, or reincarnation of Vishnu Ridiculous and Blasphemous. seem not to occupy all his time. He plays golf and tennis, he dances with the young ladies, and then resists their importunate advances, explaining that he is and must remain, a celibate. At latest reports he was suffering from nervous prostration. Naturally. This doctrine of reincarnation, as we might suppose, has a fascination for the faddists, who as Bruce Bliven says (writing on Aimee McPherson in The New Republic) “are in the habit of shopping around in a cafe Shopping HESE things are not hard to be THE lieve, if once you have passed through the novitiate of theosophy, and have absorbed the more elementary physical science of Madame Blavatsky; for example, the scientific fact that at the north and south poles there are depressions in the earth, and a kind of diaphragm which moves in and out as the earth breathes: and that the moon is the giver of life to this globe: and that the Mahatmas (exceedingly wise and holy men) who live on the plateau of Himavat in Tibet, communicated by a sort of wireless (before radio) with Madame Blavatsky. How much of this pish-tosh has been crammed into the head of young Krishnamurti, by his sponsor, Mrs. Besant, it is impossible to say. The young fellow keeps pretty quiet. Perhaps he has been commanded to keep his mouth shut. There is wisdom in that, because he would not be the first "prophet" to mess things up with too much talk. But we cannot refrain from asking how he is going to vindicate his character as savior if he does nothing but dance and play golf and attend the movies. teria of creeds, try- THOSE who know something of ing theosophy in January, Christian Science in June, raw foods and New Thought in October, Coué and internal baths in December." "We all have behind us," says a theosophist writer, "a long series of lives." We don't remember the previous existences. Why? Because memory is stored up in the soul and not in the brain, and only the brain belongs to this existence. The soul, it seems, is left back somewhere. the dissensions in this transplanted oriental religion, will not be surprised to learn that the ladies at the head of the rival sects of theosophy are not altogether in harmony about Krishnamurti. Katherine Tingley, for example, the "purple mother" of Point Loma pities the "poor boy." She says "Mrs. Besant got him while he was so very young that I think he is a poor deluded boy who would like to be excused." "Not that I would say anything harsh of Mrs. Besant," she added. No! No! If she were to sin against charity she might have to undergo a hundred more lives on earth, and next time she might be born in a slum, instead of so beautiful a spot as Point Loma. So, no unkindness! except to say that "Mrs. Besant is commercializing theosophy by utilizing Krishnamurti as the mouthpiece of God," and "by charging admission to her lectures, she is dragging theosophy into the mud." It would be easy, evidently, to take all this theosophical nonsense in the spirit of fun, if its exponents would confine themselves to discussion of the moon as the source of all life, or the poles as the orifices by which the earth breathes, or the mythical Mahatmas on the equally mythical plateau of Himavat. But when they drag in Christ, and the Mass, and the sacraments, and when they call their hodgepodge (as Mrs. Besant does) the Catholic Church, theosophy becomes, as even the patient and temperate Father Thurston has felt obliged to call it, a "sacrilegious profanation," and a "blasphemous parody." Recent Events. CHINESE BISHOPS. ON the feast of SS. Simon and Jude, October 28th, Pope Pius XI. officiated at a unique ceremony in St. Peter's: the consecration of six native Chinese bishops. Forty thousand persons attended the great ceremony, including many cardinals and members of the diplomatic corps. Following the consecration the Holy Father addressed the new bishops in Latin. He expressed his happiness that the event took place on the anniversary of his own episcopal consecration, and concluded with the confident belief that these bishops come to Rome to receive the fulness of the priesthood would fulfil the hope that the Church and their own country reposed in them, in selecting them for their high dignity. During the "Te Deum" the six bishops passed through the vast congregation blessing the people. The ceremony closed with the Papal Benediction. THE PAULIST League. THE Paulist League was organized in January, 1925, to consolidate all the forces of prayer and work to teach the people of North America the truth about the Catholic Church. Its first achievement was the erection of a powerful broadcasting station at the Paulist Church in New York, which began sending programs on the air in September of the same year. Station WLWL has attracted wide attention by the uniform excellence of its musical programs, the timeliness of its lectures, and the interest of its Question Box periods. tion Box periods. The Paulist League now wants to turn its attention to other activities, the first of which is the distribution of pamphlets on a wide scale. Catholic pamphlet literature already covers almost every department of philosophy and theology, religious biography and science as it may affect religion. The pamphlet has the advantage of being brief as well as scholarly, informal, popular, timely, and cheap. The history of the Catholic Truth Society in England, which is the chief agent of pamphlet distribution there, proves the immense good that is done to souls in this simple way. The Paulist League at its headquarters in New York will concern itself with the writing, editing and publishing of pamphlets, and study the varying necessities in the field where literature is most needed. Through its members widely scattered over the country, it will distribute these pamphlets. In order to continue its radio broadcasting work so successfully inaugurated a year ago, and to carry out this new program of pamphlet distribution, the League needs the support of all its old members and as many new members as can be interested to join in its activities. The headquarters of the Paulist League are at 401 West 59th Street, New York. In October, the first number of The League Bulletin appeared; this is sent every month to all members. |