Consistent Influence

It is Franklin Roosevelt's firm intention, and likely destiny, to go down in history as a President who affected U. S. life more profoundly than any man since Lincoln.

Eight years are the probable span allotted him for this work. Last week he expressed, through Secretary Hull, his condolences upon the death of a man who had influenced U. S. life for 17 years, a man to whom Franklin Roosevelt had lately seemed to be turning as an ally in his stand for democracy against dictatorship (TIME, Jan. 9). Congress, too, paid its respects to that man as a temporal sovereign. For the first time since 1871 Congress adjourned to honor the death of a Pope.

Ten years ago, when Al Smith ran for President, bellowed at by Alabama's Senator "Tom-Tom" Heflin, who mortally hated & feared the "Pope of Rome,"* Catholicism was brought forward as an issue in U. S. life. There can be no doubt that religious intolerance was a large factor in Al Smith's defeat. Since 1928, Pius XI's U. S. priesthood has got in some good licks on anti-Catholic sentiment. So skilfully have they stimulated U. S. reaction against that year's campaign of whispering and Heffling that the atmosphere has intangibly but perceptibly changed. If Jim Farley should run for President next year, the inevitable whispering about the Pope-in-the-White-House would more likely help than hurt him. This is the outward, political aspect of an inner, social change which Catholicism underwent in the U. S. during the reign of Achille Ratti. The country is still Protestant, but amid the deepening class cleavages of today, the Roman Catholic Church is recognized as a Gibraltar of conservatism, and respect for the constancy of its moral values has revived.

As a spiritual leader, Pius XI sought to influence the private lives of Catholic U. S. citizens as to marriage, morals, women's dress, co-education (he was against it), sex education, birth control. On the U. S. as a whole his efforts cannot be said to have had marked effect, unless they retarded inevitable progress toward more latitude in all these directions. One success was in furthering a self-imposed censorship of cinema (see p. 67). Catholic lobbies maintained in Washington to exert pressure on national legislation have had as their recent targets Child Labor legislation (against it), Federal control of education (against it), the embargo on Loyalist Spain (against lifting it).

Last week, to capitalize the public sympathy aroused by the Peace Pope's death, Rector Joseph Corrigan of Washington's Catholic University of America, announced a crusade for "God in Government." U. S. Catholics are to pledge themselves to "defend the republic against atheistic propaganda, to maintain respect for rightly constituted authority and finally to combat fearlessly every invasion of the rights of any citizen or any group of citizens."

*"Tom-Tom" Heflin, 70 next April, is now at home in Lafayette, Ala., compiling a book of anecdotes. Said he last week: "I, with millions of other peace-loving Americans, deeply regret the death of the Pope."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.