Constitutional Spirit
Sir: In connection with the article concerning deep freezer gifts, etc. [TIME, Sept. 12], I would call to your attention the words of an other public official on the subject of the receipt of gifts. John Quincy Adams, in writing to the U.S. consul in Madeira, after receiving a hogshead of wine, said, in requesting a bill for the wine:
"This request is founded upon a principle which I have always considered as resulting from the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution of the United States. While holding an employment in the public service, I have always felt myself interdicted from the acceptance of any present of value. . . ."
RICHARD MAASS
National Society of Autograph Collectors
New York City
Funny Picture
Sir:
Your bilious reviewer gives I Was a Male War Bride [TIME, Sept. 12] the full sneer treatment, but I saw a respectable audience laugh at it loudly and often . . .
R. C. W. ETTINGER
Detroit, Mich.
Sir:
What in hell is wrong with you? I Was a Male War Bride is the first funny picture I've seen for two years.
FRANK L. BRITTON
Inglewood, Calif.
P: Hollywood always hopes for--but has never made--a picture that wows each & every one of its 90 million potential customers.--ED.
The Gulf
Sir:
Thanks for your summary of the Protestant-Catholic debate [TIME, Sept. 12] . . . My reaction to the controversy is this: let both Protestants and Catholics see the beam in their own eye. Let both remember: "By their fruits shall ye know them." . . .
EDWIN F. IRWIN
Community Church
Provo, Utah
Sir:
The article . . . makes bitter reading for any true Christian. The "widening gulf between Protestants and Catholics" . . . could never have come about had not both . . . departed so far from the true teachings and Spirit of Him they both call Lord . . .
TRUMAN F. MCEURREA
Mill Valley, Calif.
Sir:
It seems to me that Protestant-Catholic "tension" exists mostly in the minds of the church leaders. An ex-Presbyterian, I married into a Catholic family who welcomed me with open arms, and have never high-pressured me to join their church . . .
SUSAN C. HUGGER
Cincinnati, Ohio
Sir:
Father Murray's haughty assertion that the Pope will never consent to sit as an equal among the equals at the World Council of Churches shows how far the Roman Catholic Church has deviated from both the spirit and teaching of Christ and the practice of the early church. Christ was most emphatic in stating that the only supremacy His followers could covet was to be based not on domination but on humble service (St. Matthew XX, v. 26-27) . . .
(REV.) FRANCIS C. CAPOZZI
St. Mary's Episcopal Church
Windgap, Pa.
Sir:
It is regrettable that Father Murray refuses to answer in a serious manner the expressed dangers to traditional American ideals posed by the Roman Catholic Church . . . Romanism at present is bearing the brunt of Communistic attacks against religion, and is needing the aid and sympathy of all Christian people.
VICTOR NICKELSON
Orangeburg, N.Y.
Sir:
. . . Without being anti-Catholic, Americans must learn to defend our traditional rights to freedom of belief or disbelief . . .
STEPHEN H. FRITCHMAN
First Unitarian Church
Los Angeles, Calif.
Sir:
. . . From the welter of confusion and dissension, which have at all times characterized the Protestant sects, has emerged much of the religious indifferentism, worldliness and irreligion which are the marks of contemporary living . . . [Protestants] have thus far found no means of halting the anarchy which stems unceasingly from the Protestant principle of exalting the private judgment of each individual. When Luther posted his thesis on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral, he unleashed upon the world a Pandora's box full of the evils of paganism, free love, divorce, and error from which the world has not yet recovered . . .
PATRICIA JOHNSTON
New York City
Sir:
Referring to Father Murray's passing off the boycotting of offensive periodicals as a thing of ancient vintage: would it be out of order to mention Monsignor Freking's threat of a Catholic boycott of the Cincinnati Enquirer as recently as the last week in August [TIME, Sept. 5]?
FRANK H. LANGDON
Ipswich, Mass.
Sir:
Dean Bowie said "that religion can only be real when each man espouses that which he himself believes." Let us go a step farther and say that the same is true in mathematics, so that if a man cannot accept the fact that 2 x 2 equals 4 because "he himself does not believe it," then let him choose any number he may please.
The principles of religion, that is of the true religion, are or are not fact. Christ did not live on earth, establish a Church, instruct His disciples to "go forth and teach all nations" if He did not at the same time give them Truth to teach. If any church has that truth and can prove it, as can the Catholic Church, then it is not a question of whether or not the individual can or cannot believe it; for the truth never changes . . .
NOLAN L. FREMIN
New Orleans, La.
Sir:
The opposing views of Dean Walter Russell Bowie and Father Murray remind one of a story current in the '20s.
A Model T and a mule met on a narrow road and neither would give way. "What are you?" said the mule to the Model T. "I'm an automobile," replied the Model T, "and what are you?" To which the mule replied: "I'm a horse." Then they both laughed and shared the road.
Father Murray's contention that the Roman Church is the one true church of Christ may sound like a neigh to his ears, but to most Americans it has the sound of a bray.
MICHAEL KARY
Rochester, N.Y.
P: Of 78 letters on the Bowie-Murray debate, 14 defended the Catholic position, 58 the Protestant, and six--bridging the gulf--asked for greater tolerance and understanding on both sides.--ED.
Skip the Quotes
'Sir:
I was considerably riled by the quote marks around the word Captain in your story on the oyster boats [TIME, Aug. 29] . . .
Skippering the Queen Elizabeth is a comparative heaven to the command of an oyster boat. An oyster boat captain is his own first mate, steward, chief engineer and bosun, and for a crew [more often than not] he has the scum of humanity . . .
WALTER CARROLL
Durham, N.C.
P: Aye, aye, Sir.--ED.
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