The Catholic at the Y

Softballs were lofting, basketballs thumping, swimming pools sloshing. People ranging from kids to grandmas were learning ballroom dancing, bird watching, guitar playing, oil painting, cake baking and bridge at North America's 2,500 YMCAs and YWCAs. Yet, according to the big-circulation (913,331) Roman Catholic weekly. Our Sunday Visitor, some 20% of the thumpers, sloshers. bakers and players should not have been there. They are Catholics, and. said the paper, the Young Men's (or Women's) Christian Association is no place for a Catholic.

"Were the YMCA to label itself the Young Men's Protestant Association, it might be more candid," wrote William J. Whalen, English professor at Indiana's Purdue University and student of Roman Catholic youth. "Forty years ago. the Holy Office warned Catholics against joining or supporting the YMCA, 'an organization which instills indifference and apostasy . . . ' Books on sex and marriage published by the Association Press, the Y's publishing arm, present views on masturbation, premarital intercourse, sterilization, divorce and birth control at obvious variance with Catholic principles." The books' willingness to discuss the pros and cons of these subjects conflicts with the flat Catholic bans against them.

Other foursquare Roman Catholic periodicals have warned the faithful against the Protestantism that the Y is supposed to offer along with its weight-reducing classes and such, but the days are long gone when the London-founded, 117-year-old Y was an evangelical organization that excluded what Whalen called "Romanists, Jews and infidels." Few Catholics have paid heed to theological lint-picking over what is now virtually a community organization. In Dallas, however, the Times-Herald last week front-paged the Sunday Visitor article and promptly blew up a storm. "Active membership in the Y is closed to Catholics," the paper quoted the diocese's Roman Catholic information director, "the same as the Methodist Youth Fellowship is not for Catholic teenagers." Many Dallas Catholics were outraged. "They're not going to tell me I can't take a Y hair-cutting course!" fumed one housewife.

Bishop Thomas K. Gorman of Dallas and Fort Worth was not about to tell her any such thing, as he slapped down the potent Visitor. He had not the slightest objection, he announced, "to Catholics living at the YMCA or participating in its recreational programs. Of course they should not participate in the religious exercises--any more than we would expect a Baptist to come to our service and kneel and stand up with us."

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