Mindszenty Trial

Sir:

I appreciate the unbiased [article] on Cardinal Mindszenty in TIME, Feb. 14 ... So seldom does one read a fair expose of a rather complicated ecclesiastical situation such as this in which the cardinal was placed . . .

REV. J. SCHMEIER

St. Joseph's Rectory

Waukegan, Ill.

Sir:

. . . Must TIME be so downright popish? What happened to Cardinal Mindszenty was news (but not your speculations about what might have happened) . . .

M. R. REBENTISCH

Saranac Lake, N.Y.

Sir:

. . . No drug known to Western science could account for his repeated "confessions"? ... Nonsense! . . . Mindszenty's recantation is a classic example of engineered morphine addiction ...

PAUL MCGUERTY

East Dedham, Mass.

Sir:

. . . That your article was worthy of the man is the greatest tribute I could offer.

FR. PATRICK ADAMS, O.F.M.

St. Bonaventure Monastery

St. Bonaventure, N.Y.

Sir:

Your masterful story . . . exposes our age as one of technical achievement, jets and atomic bombs, paralleled by moral and cultural decay. Like the case of Gandhi, it again proves to a material world how dangerous it is to be really good. . . .

HANS W. KRUGER

Orlando, Fla.

Sir:

... A story that warned of impending danger . . .

HENRY S. HAJENIAN Atlanta, Ga.

Sir:

. . . Well done. REV. WILLIAM H. POWELL, SJ.

Sacred Heart Rectory

La Plata, Md.

Sir:

Millions of Protestant Christians are extremely skeptical as to the martyr role of Cardinal Mindszenty . . . His stand against the totalitarian state does not wholly look like genuine heroism in behalf of spiritual treasures. There is nothing in the Gospel to justify the Roman Catholic Church's ownership of more than one million acres of land, on which a hundred thousand tenants have been living like medieval serfs. The present government of Hungary stood for social justice and Christian democracy when it took the land away from the feudal bishops and gave it to the freed serfs . . .

REV. FRANCIS C. CAPOZZI

St. Mary's Episcopal Church

Wind Gap, Pa.

Sir:

. . . The trial of the cardinal was farcical, and a very hollow pretense of a just trial. The thing I noticed is that the Pope excommunicated everyone connected with the trial, without even a pretense at giving a trial to them.

J. E. MCALLISTER Spartanburg, S.C.

Sir:

... All the evidence . . . seems to indicate that Cardinal Mindszenty was trying to impose the will of the Church on the state . . . Regardless of the evils of Communism, it is absurd to suppose that the government has not got a perfect moral right to protect itself against all subversive efforts to overthrow it. Aren't we trying twelve Communists on exactly the same charges in our own country? . . .

JAMES S. RUDOLPH

Paris, France

Sir:

. . . Your footnote about [the imprisoned] Bishop Lajos Ordass reminded me about the deplorable lack of international publicity given to this martyr of the Lutheran Church. When [he] visited the Lutheran churches here in May 1947, he was warned that his return behind the Iron Curtain might prove to be dangerous. But he went back, nevertheless, with conscious and courageous defiance. "Now is the time," he said, "that we have to become martyrs, so that posterity will not accuse us of abandoning our strategic positions in a crisis" . . .

REV. JOHN L. E. DE PAPP Buffalo, N.Y.

Suggestions

Sir:

You quote the ad of a Londoner who would like to stop smoking but doesn't want suggestions calling for will power [TIME, Feb. 14]. You might tell him that the way to stop is not to think of it as a sharp break off . If the smoker will just postpone the next smoke and keep on postponing it, he will find that it isn't too hard to get rid of the habit,

CHARLES J. DOWNING

Denver, Colo.

Sir:

In 1888 the writer was one of 40 or more boys attending Todd School for Boys, at Woodstock, Ill. One kid wanted to be cured of the tobacco habit, and proceeded as follows: he procured a large plug of chewing tobacco, cut it into small bits in a can of water, boiled it for several hours, drank the liquid . . . He lived through it, and never smoked or chewed tobacco again . . .

PHIL APFEL

Seattle, Wash.

Forgotten Heroine

Sir:

In connection with your Jan. 31 story on yellow fever, I would like to call your attention to a great American heroine . . . who sacrificed her life in demonstrating that the fever was carried by the Stegomyia mosquito and in no other way. This knowledge enabled Dr. Gorgas to eliminate yellow fever and malaria in the Canal Zone, thus paving the way for safe construction of the Panama Canal . . .

Nurse Clara Maass, a graduate of the Lutheran Memorial Hospital, N.J., who died at the age of 25 years to make this great triumph of medical research possible, has been ignored and forgotten . . . She symbolizes the sacrificial spirit of the best in young American womanhood . . .

(REV.) ARTHUR HERBERT Lutheran Memorial Hospital Association Newark, NJ.

P: Nurse Maass felt that she would be more useful as a fighter against yellow fever if she became immune to it. Along with eight Spanish immigrants and one Englishman, she volunteered to be bitten. She and two of the Spaniards died.--ED.

Shock?

Sir:

This may come as a great shock to you, but the Seventh Commandment, and not the Eighth, is Thou Shalt Not Steal [TIME, Feb. 7] . . .

JAMES P. O'BRIEN

Brooklyn, N.Y.

P: To the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches. To almost all other Protestants, to the Jewish and Eastern Orthodox Churches, it is the Eighth. TIME followed the widest usage.--ED.

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