Dialectician

Great presses whirred and thundered, duplicating in pamphlet form two million times an encyclical letter which was sent out last week by the Roman Catholic bishops of the U. S. Episcopate on the subject of the present religious controversy in Mexico (TIME, Feb. 15 et seq.). Though His Eminence Patrick Cardinal Hayes issued the encyclical at Manhattan, it was drafted by four middle western bishops and betrayed in many a line the trenchant, winning pen of the Rt. Rev. Francis C. Kelley, Bishop of Oklahoma. The keynote:

"There can be no relationship between the principles upon which the Mexican Constitution is built, the laws that embody them, the spirit with which it is proposed they shall be enforced and the principles, laws and spirit that are held sacred by the American people."*

Next the disparity amounting to antithesis between Mexican and U. S. laws affecting religious liberty was ably pointed out./-

The question of whether the Mexican Roman Catholic Episcopate had meddled in Mexican politics was shrewdly answered:

"It is true the Church is the only defender the country could find against assaults by Communists and atheists on civil, political and religious liberties. It is not true that the Church engaged in merely partisan politics."

The present Mexican Government was described as "a product of new paganism." Finally it was asserted that the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico: 1) has carried on most of the educational, relief and hospital work which has been done in that country; 2) has not drawn undue wealth from the people.*

Significance. The Mexican religious struggle has settled down to a war of propaganda. The encyclical did not scruple to invoke a boojum like "un-Americanism"--which has the power of all nationalist invocations down to "Hawaii for the Hawaiians" and "Yap for the Yaps." In the war of propaganda between Mexico City and Rome the latter is now leading heavily in the U. S. with its two million encyclical letter pamphlets following closely the recently distributed legal indictment of Mexico by William Dameron Guthrie, Roman Catholic President of the Association of the Bar of New York City (TIME, Dec. 13). As the Mexican Government retorts in kind, the "rights" and even the facts of the case are rapidly fading from view. Each new barrage of propaganda, from whichever side, must be weighed with the suspicion appropriate to the consideration of a plea in court for the plaintiff or the defense.

Who is likely to become the chief Roman Catholic attorney for the defense in this great case before the bar of public opinion? Not that busy organizer His Eminence George Cardinal Mundelein, no giant among dialecticians. Not the genial, benevolent Cardinal Hayes. Most certainly not His Eminence William Cardinal O'Connell, preoccupied as he is with the affairs of Boston. Finally not His Eminence Denis Cardinal Dougherty, pious, harmoniously resident amid the calm of Philadelphia. None of the four U. S. cardinals ranks with the late James Cardinal Gibbons in ability to drive a persuasive quill. Does Rome look to him who sits on the seat of Cardinal Gibbons? It is His Grace the Archbishop of Baltimore, Michael Curley, a Roosevelt rather than a Wilson. But in Francis Clement Kelley, Bishop of Oklahoma, Okla., Rome has found far more than an able scrivener. He is fervent yet logical, logical without being dull, slyly humorous but minus the handicaps in persuasion of one who openly jests. A good example of his talents is his mot upon the Mexican law forbidding the holding of political meetings in churches. Said he: "This would have been bad for the Anti-Saloon League in the days that are gone. But when has the Catholic Church ever permitted churches to be used for such purposes?" Here we have a criticism of Mexican law, a sly dig at the Anti-Saloon League and a fervent affirmation of the spotless honor of the Church--all in two sentences. Bishop Kelley is a worthy antagonist for Mexico's special pleaders.

A band of 30 self-appointed U. S. investigators, organized by Congregationalists, will depart at their own expense for Mexico as the year opens, to investigate thoroughly religious, economic and educational conditions,

*In Washington a member of the Mexican Legation observed: "The Bishops appear to have forgotten that Mexicans are an American people, perhaps the most American people."

/-Mexicans have remarked that, considering the totally different circumstances of the Mexican and U. S. Revolutions, it is remarkable that the resulting legal structures are not more dissimilar than they are.

*How difficult it is to arrive at the truth of this hotly contested point may be seen upon scrutinizing the "unanswerable" statement of the encyclical that at her richest the Roman Catholic Church of Mexico never collected "a donation of even as much as one peso from each member of the flock per year." A Mexican would point out that "the flock" includes in Roman Catholic computation hundreds of thousands of peasants who have only the vaguest religious concepts, and habitually confuse the Trinity with the native gods of old Mexico. Should "the flock" be pruned of all these semi-pagans the contribution per "orthodox" Roman Catholic would be found to have doubled many times. To Roman Catholics "The flock's the flock, and there's an end on't!"