Resignation in Phoenix
Sir:
The story of Rev. Emmett McLoughlin [TIME, Dec. 13] will shock many more than the residents of Phoenix . . . Fortunately, however, such apostasies as Father McLoughlin's are rare, and we still have our Ronald Knoxes and Fulton Sheens to compensate.
Questions I would like answered: 1) Will Phoenix have as much respect for "Mister" McLoughlin as it did for "Father" McLoughlin? 2) Will St. Monica's Hospital (which sounds Catholic enough) favor the idea of having an "ex-priest" on its board of directors?
Methinks that ere long Emmett McLoughlin will be forced to give up the very things for which he has now renounced his vows.
THOMAS F. McADAM
Providence, R.I.
P: Answers as of last week: 1) Phoenicians still found it simplest to call him "Father McLoughlin"; 2) the board of nondenominational St. Monica's had voted unanimously to keep him as superintendent.--ED.
Sir:
Thanks for presenting the other side of the picture for a change. Too often when an article on religion appears in any magazine (including TIME), a picture is painted of Protestantism as being hopelessly divided . . . while the Roman Catholic Church is usually presented as being one big, harmonious, happy family . . .
REV. MERLE G. FRANKE
Frederiksted Lutheran Church
Frederiksted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Sir:
You are to be congratulated on the journalistic courage which you displayed in reporting the resignation of Emmett McLoughlin from the Roman Catholic priesthood. This is certainly a contradiction of the seeming trend being followed by the secular press, in which conversions to Catholicism are faithfully reported, while departures from the Catholic Church are seldom mentioned . . .
ROBERT L. MADEIRA
Elizabethtown, Pa.
P: Let Reader Madeira be more chary with his awards for valor. The Phoenix papers front-paged the story of Franciscan McLoughlin, A.P. and U.P. carried it on the wires.--ED.
Hat & All
Sir:
With all due reverence for all concerned, may I suggest the role of W. C. Fields for Mr. Herbert Hoover in any film based on the life of the former gentleman? Your picture, hat & all, in TIME, Dec. 13 [see cut], prompts this suggestion.
C. S. EMMONS
Albany, Ore.
Sir:
What a nice picture of Herbert Hoover . . . Since he has stopped wearing those old high collars he looks more like "Cactus Jack" Garner all the time.
K. MILLIGAN
New York City
No Worse than Pneumonia
Sir:
Thanks for your reviews of The Snake Pit and Albert Deutsch's The Shame of the States [TIME, Dec. 20]. They both show our need for better facilities and staffing for our mental institutions. Twice I have been resident in Elgin State Hospital (Ill.) as a patient ... It is my belief that mental illness is no more serious than many other of the serious illnesses such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, and heart trouble.
If we must limit the increase in expenditure, my own suggestion would be to emphasize more strongly the increase in the number and quality of the mental hospitals' staffs of attendants, nurses and doctors. They and the fellow patients can help us 'queer ones' get well; buildings can not.
WILLIAM WILLIS
Chicago, Ill.
Sir:
. . . The depicting of insanity in its most horrible phase, and of state hospitals as chambers of horrors, is so frightening as to do more harm than good.
JOSEPH CADY ALLEN
Geneseo, Ill.
Political Puss
Sir:
Your story of the kittens whose eyes were opened from Communism to Social Democracy [TIME, Dec. 20] I first heard in September 1884, during the campaign of James G. Blaine and John A. Logan against Grover Cleveland and T. A. Hendricks, in the then backwoods town of Smethport, McKean County, Pa. The kittens were Democrats who became Republicans . . .
C. H. C. WRIGHT
Cambridge, Mass.
Michelangelo No. 1
Sir:
. . . "Never before has a Michelangelo statue ... been exhibited in the U.S." [TIME, Dec. 20]. Webster defines a statue as a sculptured or modeled likeness of a living being, in the full form on all sides. So, in the literal sense, you are right. But, a Michelangelo sculpture--actually carved by Michelangelo, that is--has been exhibited before: the magnificent marble relief of the Madonna with Child and Little St. John from the National Museum (Bargello) in Florence, which was shown in the Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, 1939, and subsequently in Chicago and New York.
WALTER HEIL Director
M. H. De Young Memorial Museum Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, Calif.
P: Reader Heil is right, too (see cut). --ED.
Video Verbiage (Cont'd)
Sir:
. . . I, like H. L. Mencken, am unimpressed by the suggested names for TV fans [TIME, Dec. 20]. But I would like to submit "televice" as a term to describe the condition which is demoralizing erstwhile model housekeepers, and which is paralyzing the boys at the corner bar . . .
JOHNSIE M. FIOCK FILDES
Olney, Ill.
Sir:
Concurring with . . . the deplorable lack of an expressive name for TV fans, may I venture: teleadict and telemaniac.
JOHN D. NICHOLS
Toledo, Ohio
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