One Lord, One World, No. 2 of 16 No. 2 of 16

During the next half hour of the National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated independent stations have made their facilities available to the National Council of Catholic Man as a public service for the presentation of the Catholic Hour. Today at the right reverend, Lord Senior, Otham J. Jean will deliver the second in a series of sixteen addresses under the General Title One Lord, One World, and the choir of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, New York City, directed by Warren Foley, will present a musical program. Three of the four evangelists have recorded for us how Christ pacified the satsang-tost waters of the sea and the fears of his disciples with his words, peace, it is I. Saint Amatolia's Bishop of the early fifth century has given us the political rendering of this story in an English translation of which Mr. Foley now directs his choristers. It is the setting of fears where the wild billow by T. Tertius Noble. The Catholic Hour presents again to the radio audience the right reverend, Monsignor, Fulton J. Jean, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America, Washington D.C. The title of Monsignor Jean's talk is Man of Goodwill, Monsignor Jean. Those of you who did the courtesy of listening last week will recall that we plead it for unity among men of goodwill against the common enemy. To further encourage that feeling of unity we said that the National Council of Catholic Men was publishing a little book entitled Friends, which will be sent free to you if you write and ask for it, just as soon as it is off the press. We trust too that in order to make this plea effective all listeners will spend an hour a day in prayer. And Catholics, whenever possible, will make that hour in the presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Today we take another step in this series. Let's hit the need of unity among Jews and Protestants and Catholics. The next question is, what kind of unity is Hamlet said? I. There's the rubble. For two kinds of unity are possible. Unity for religious purposes and unity for social purposes. Unity for religious purposes is commonly called union of churches and envisages the merging of various sects into a common belief, right or form of worship, broad enough and vague enough to be acceptable to all. Unity for social purposes on the contrary leaves theology untouched and unites religious peoples rather than religions on the basis of certain moral principles that are necessary to guide the political, economic and social life of our times. Which shall it be? Absolutely not a union of churches on the basis of the least common denominator. Why not? Well, first of all, because it does violence to truth, by what right do we sit in judgment on divinity and say? This much of thy truth we will accept. This much we reject. We are not the creators of divine truth. We are only its trustees and discardions. What is God made may not be man unmade. Furthermore, a union of churches does violence to history. Nevertheless, it lords that to Peter, whose name he changed to rock. Upon this rock, I will build my church. He did not say, I will build my churches. There is only one truth to light a heaven. There is only one son to light a world. There is only one church to light mankind. But in rejecting a union of churches purchased in compromise of truth and history, we nevertheless pay tribute to the ideals of its advocates who seek to promote charity among men. But there is another kind of unity possible among men of good will, namely unity for social purposes. Outside of the Catholic faith there is a common ground where cooperation between men of good will is necessary and possible, namely the preservation of the moral law in the social order. For example, we can be united for the defense of private property, for equality of all races and colors and classes, for the betterment of working conditions, for freedom of conscience, for a peace based on justice, and for a hundred and one other moral requisites of a social order where men of good will can live short of a risk of martyrdom. It must, however, be understood that cooperation for the preservation of the moral basis of society must never be accepted as a substitute for religion. Not now are the difficulties in the way of this kind of unity. For the moment I speak to my fellow Catholics. It is very easy for us Catholics to excuse ourselves and collaboration for social purposes. On the ground that politics are rotten, or that coming is hold important posts in government, or that capitalism is incurably selfish. Because of this, draw apart into a Catholic-combing existence doing nothing except to chant the lamentations of Jeremiah's. It is incumbent upon Catholics to maintain fellowship across lines of difference if the moral order is to be preserved. This is Thalm Catholic doctrine. When, for example, France was going through that terrible struggle of monarchy and republicanism, they owed a thirteenth appeal for joint action of Catholics and non-Catholics to save what he called the moral grandeur of France. These were his words, we exhort not only Catholics, but all Frenchmen of good will and good sense to put far from them every source of political dissension in order that they may consecrate their energies solely to the pacification of their country. And by as the tenth urged Catholics, near I quote him verbatim, to cause ev'ete that peace with their non-Catholic fellow citizens without which neither social order nor civil prosperity can be achieved. And certainly none of us today may forget that our present Holy Father has condemned and here I quote him, those currents of thought which hold that since redemption belongs to the sphere of supernatural race and is therefore exclusively the work of God, there is no need for us to cooperate on earth. We trust therefore that no Catholic will excuse himself from the duty of uniting with men of good will for the moral renewal of society in spirit and in truth. Now I word about us all, Jews and Protestants and Catholics. All decent Americans today are very much disturbed about the hate which war engenders. The Jews are worried about anti-Semitism. The Christians are disturbed by those commentators and journalists who give approval nine times out of ten to those political or world forces which are deliberately anti-religious. After this time men of good will have attempted to crush this spirit of hate by an appeal to tolerance. It is our position that tolerance is inadequate to deal with that problem. The reasons are obvious. Modern tolerance has a very bad history. It was conceived in his present form by the merchants of the 18th century who seemed that theological disputes hurt business, suggested that all religions be regarded as unimportant. Modern tolerance is not based on respect for persons, but on indifference to truth and to right and wrong. In terms of the favorite slogan of modern tolerance is, there are two sides to every question. Forgetful that religion, truth and justice, if they have two sides, have the same two sides as fly paper, the right and the wrong. This war has given a terrific joke to this false tolerance. If there is no objective difference between right and wrong, independent of our point of view, tell me, why should we be fighting the Nazis and the Japs? And how could we be right if it makes no difference what you believe? Nothing has so vitiated the whales of friendliness as that unspeakably stupid statement of all terror about tolerance. You have heard it many times, namely, I will fight your opinions with my life, but I will fight to the death your right to hold them. Now, that sounds very good in the abstract, but translated into the concrete language of our day and what does vote here say. Vote here, I would say to Hitler, I will fight your Naziism with its brutal murder of women and children with my life, but I will also fight for your right to hold those views. Or I will fight against you if you attempt to murder your mother-in-law with an axe, but I will use another axe to defend your right to the opinion that a mother-in-law should be murdered. And this same vote here who set himself up as an apostle of tolerance and spent most of his time writing about it as the same one who attacked Christianity's saying it took only 12 men to found that in for me. It will take only one to destroy it. Let all terror stand. In vain will the Jews seek to crush anti-Semitism? And in vain will the Christians seek to crush anti-Christianity and bigotry and hatred? If our appeals are based solely on indifference to truth, terror, alven by itself has no rights. Abselutely none. The persons in error have rights. They have all the rights and creatures of God. The Jew are the Christian therefore who is satisfied with merely being tolerated in society as already surrendered some of his rights and made him self-relest respectable. Not until we recognize the dignity of human nature as such created by a loving God, destined for a union with love with him will we ever find an adequate basis for loving one another. There are only two philosophies of life anyway. We must decide which we will choose in our search for unity. The one says, man is descended from a monkey. Therefore let us love one another. And the other philosophies statement the words of our Lord is, love one another as I have loved you. There is no possibility of love in the first. For if we came from the beast then let us act like beasts. But if we were made by love then we should love one another as God loves us. As the spokes of a wheel are united because they are all centered in the hub so we can be united only in our center who is God. And a very good start, torches collaboration of men of good will would be to deflare a moratorium on name calling. Consider the present tendency among those who hate the Catholic Church to call the Church fascist. Or the tendency of many good Christians to call all men who are interested in forward social legislation communists. Or the more general tendency to call anyone who opposes our pet ideas a Nazi or a friend of Hitler. These labels are thrown about in the press and on the radio just as commonly as ignorant boys write dirty words on bat fences. They are just as low and foul. And they mean nothing but hate. We are indeed in a very sorry impulse when a man's patriotism is challenged because he does not love an undemocratic government in a foreign land as much as he loves his own dear America. Love God and then you will love your neighbor whom so every beer and regardless of race or class or color. Love alone is the basis of unity and regardless of what our political vision may be we must all subscribe to the words of the Holy Father who bids us foster. In the common bond of love or unity. Shall those who glory in the name of the Christian forget these words? In you commandment I give unto you that you love one another and shall the Jew forget his Leviticus. Thou shalt love thy friend as thy self. I am thy lord and shall the pagan forget that Aristotle said nothing is more proper to friendship than to share each other's lives. Men of good will therefore unite. Unite not because there is not a divine religious voice in the world for there is. But because society and abandoning the rule of conscience is on the very verge of suicide. March separately according to the light of your conscience, Jew, Protestant and Catholic. But fight together for the moral detriment of the world. Centuries ago the star of Bethlehem became the beacon that led the truly wise men to the god of love who appeared in the flesh and who preached. Love God and love your neighbor. On this day millions of stars are out again shining in the windows of millions of American homes. Whence the flower of American manhood has gone out to write a world that forgot the meaning of that first star and the love that lived at the end of his trail. The star's tangled banner now flies in a star's tangled land. And what had changed America this land would be. If every watcher of these stars like wise men saw they led to God and to him offered gifts as they knelt one out a day in adoration of him, that peace might reign again. Stars come out only at night as centuries on watch in the encampment of the skies. Even in the darkness they are free for they obey God's laws. Our stars are out to and all our homes because it is night. There is darkness over the earth. We have forgotten our God. May not too many blue stars turn to gold before we begin to love one another with that love with which he first loved us. And would that with as many eyes as stars we looked on God and prayed and hoped and loved that peace might done as the light of the world comes to us again all over the world. God bless. Monsignor Sheen has just delivered an address entitled Men of Goodwill. You may obtain a copy of Monsignor Sheen's talk by writing to the National Council of Catholic Men Washington, DC, or to the station to which you are now listening. It fully now directs his choristers in the Kwando Corpus Moriator, when the potting soul has flared, taken from the familiar setting of the Stop at Matheir of Rossini. We now invite all those listening to join Monsignor Sheen in offering up this prayer in time of war. For Lord Jesus Christ, who in diversity hear of the prayers of sinners, for of all who we visit see, for of grace and blessing upon our country and its citizens, we pray and particular for the presence. For our Congress, for all our soldiers, for all who defend us in ships, whether on the seas or in the skies, for all who are suffering the hardships to war, we pray for all who are in danger. Bring us all after the troubles of this life. In the three of us, in the reunite us all together for ever for years, in life glorious and friendly, King God. Next week, Monsignor Sheen will be with us again on the Catholic Hour. The subject of his talk will be the natural law of God. The music on today's program was directed by Warren Fully. Your announcer is John Patrick Costello. This is the National Broadcasting Company.