Noe's Woes

A haggard, burning-eyed clergyman last week went about his duties in St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Memphis, Tenn. and in his home in the shadow of the white stone Gothic fane. People in his Bible class, at wedding and funeral services he conducted, at Holy Communion in the Cathedral, eyed Very Rev. Israel Harding Noe with silent, respectful curiosity. They had read in Memphis newspapers that this dean of the Cathedral, once a florid and jovial churchman, had for a year taken no nourishment but orange juice. For a fortnight, to prove that "the soul is above the need of material life," he had, according to his friends, subsisted on sips of wine and tiny wafers from the communion services he conducted thrice weekly.

Nearly seven years ago Ellen Morris Cam bios Noe (pronounced Noy), wife of the dean and mother of his two daughters, left the deanery, brought suit for divorce. Dean Noe had ceased marital relations with her, believing that childbirth might endanger her health and that "the only Christian standard of birth control is self control." Mrs. Noe lost her suit (TIME, March 14, 1932, et ante), remained separated from the dean until last month. By that time Dean Noe had embarked upon the course which doctors and friends said last week could end only in death or forced feeding.

As Dean Noe, long a popular, liberal-minded Memphis churchman, performed his pastoral tasks last week with vigor which amazed observers, he insisted that his huskiness of voice, his loss of weight from 200 pounds to 100 pounds or less, were the result of a recent attack of influenza. In Chicago, Dr. Morris Fishbein, perennial spokesman for U. S. Medicine, expressed doubt that Dean Noe had lived on oranges for a year, cracked: "The stomach has no religion."

In his sermon last Sunday Dean Noe declared: "Unless the Church can demonstrate here in the 20th Century that the life of the Gospels can be lived in full, the Church may as well close its doors." In an interview next day the dean clarified his views and answered Dr. Fishbein by saying: "No man could live on oranges alone, that is, on the natural plane. I have displaced the need for oranges by building up within myself spiritual strength and energy. . . . I intend to prove that the spirit can sustain the body, unaided by food or drink."

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