The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1960-01-29
JOSEPH BREIG-
Dan'l and
the Devil

JUST ABOUT the easiest way of getting your
name in the papers nowadays is to say something
about whether or not you think the United States OF
America is hale and hearty enough to withstand the
might some day be elected who is a %(shudder) Catholic.
Make it Roman Catholic, and shudder twice.
How stands the Union? Thus might old Dan1
Webster, he who was not afraid OF the Devil himself,
inquire In an oratoTical roar, reverberating in a sonic
boom from Maine $50 goes the nation to California
$50 goes the populationE
How stands the nation? Rockribbed or not? Well.
she stands in peril dire, if we can believe those
whose hair turns whittier than the White House at the
thought of It's ever being occupied by a man who
goes to mass on Sundays and maybe even kneels
down now and then to pray the Rosary.
CONGRESS, it appears, does not matter a fig.
Nobody spreads the alarm like Paul Revere, or loads
his musket like a Minute Man, when a Catholic, or
many Catholics, is Tor are) elected to the House or
the Senate. Congress, one gathers, could be as Catholic
as the College of Cardinals, and nobody would so
much as look up from the sports pages,
The Supreme Court is equally of little conse-
quence. No new Boston Tea parties have been held,
even though for generations it has been customary to
have at least one Catholic sitting with the other
justices to interpret the Constitution, and sometimes
to overrule Congress and the president too.
How stands the Union?
Nobody apparently, so much as notices that many
OF the governors of the SO states are Catholics, and
many of the mayors of cities, and countless council
men and members of state legislatures.
INDEED, YOU COULD walk through many a
state capitol. and city hall, and county building and
find that half or more of the men and women who
tend to the affairs of government are Catholics. Ro-
man Catholics. The police departments, the national
guards, the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force are
plain polluted df my felloW-Catholics will excuse the
world with them. And still there are no terrifying
headlines in tn newspapers, or blood-chilling articles
In the magazines, about the nation standing on the
brink Of destruction for such reasons.
Somehow. a Catholic in the presidency is another
matter. A h%orrifying matter. At least. ii is so in the
eyes OF a few Americans who are in position to get
their statements widely publicized.
Let us not name any of them. Let us not chip any
chips off the rock-ribbed harmony of the Union. They
are frightened, or they profess to be; and when a man
Is frightened, he may sometimes say things which are
best laid not to him, but to his fright, and then for
gotten.
AS a Catholic, yes a Roman Catholic, | for one
do not particularly care whether | live to see a Catho-
lie in the White House.
DECLINE. to vote along religious lines. | refuse
to pervert the democratic process. | shrink from be-
havlor so un-American. But have a suggestion,
p Possibly the frightened ones are afraid merely
OF change. So maybe we ought to amend the Consti-
tuition, just for a short time. to allow us to send a
Roman Catholic to the White House for, say, one week,
and then a Jew for one week also.
Then we could all 60 back to work and stop litter
ing and arguing and pointing with alarm. | think old
Dan1 Webster would chuckle, and say we had outfoxed
the Devil once more.