One Lord, One World, No. 1 of 16 No. 1 of 16

During the next half hour of the National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated independent stations that made their facilities available to the National Council of Catholic Men as a public service for the presentation of the Catholic House. In today's program, the choir of the Blessed Sacrament Church, New York City, under the direction of Warren A. Foley, will provide the music. And we shall welcome back to the Catholic Hour of the right-revern, Montsenior Fusenjé Sheen, who will give the first of a series of sixteen tofs under the General Title, One Lord, One World. From the works of the great 16th Century composer, Palace Freena, who require sings the glory of pottery, who glory be to the Father. Today the Catholic Hour presents Montsenior Fusenjé Sheen, as those who have been in the position of the Catholic University of America, Washington DC. Montsenior Sheen speaks to us tonight on the subject, called to unity, Montsenior Sheen. Friends, a holy and a peaceful New Year under God. I pray for you one and all. Please ago, they're rang out over the white chalked hills of Bethlehem, the song of angel voices, peace on earth to men of goodwill. Men of goodwill. Three times recently we have heard echoes of that song. One echo comes and teher on. The other from the President of the United States, and the third from the Church. The teher on declaration spoke of the overwhelming masses of the people of the world as men of goodwill. President Roosevelt spoke of them as being the ninety percent. And the Holy Father spoke of them as comprising the great majority. It may appropriately be asked, if men of goodwill are in the overwhelming majority, why does not goodwill prevail? The answer is, power is dissipated through disunion. Now conscious of the fact that I have the honor to address not only my fellow Catholics, but Protestants and Jews who do me the favor of listening and praying for me, I shall use this series of broadcasts to cultivate a greater unity of men of goodwill. And to that end, the National Council of Catholic Men is now creating a booklet of mine entitled Friends, which seeks to be get more friendly relations between all classes and races and colors and people on the basis of the charity and love of God. If you're right for it now, it will be sent to you free just as soon as it is off the press. Mage of you to spend an hour of day in prayer and adoration that goodwill may prevail, for it can come only from God. In this particular broadcast, I live at myself to one specific point, to giving a reason why men of goodwill should unite. Only because there is a common enemy. This common enemy has three characteristics. It is atheistic. It is alien to our civilization. And it is a repudiation of the Christian tradition. Notice how much it has grown in the last few decades. 25 years ago, for example, atheism was an individual phenomenon. Today atheism is social. The atheist, to once, was a curiosity. Is today a component part of some of the governments of the world. A few decades ago, Christianity struggles were more in the nature of a civil war. Let us to say religious rivalries and contentions, that they always exist between sex within the great body of Christendom itself. For example, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and Calvinists, and in a broader way, Jews, Protestants and Catholics. Today, that simple condition no longer prevails. Christianity is no longer engaged exclusively in a civil war. It is face to face with an invasion. And in curation of totally alien forces who were opposed to all religion and all morality, whether it be Jewish or Christian, once men quarreled because they wanted God worshiped a certain way. Now they quarreled because they do not want God worshiped at all. The wars of religion of the 17th century have just become wars against religion in the 20th. And finally, we live in an age of revolution. But there is a vast difference between the revolutions of our times and those of the past. None of the previous revolutions in Christian history ever repudiated the moral law. Certainly our American revolution did not. But the three major revolutions of our times, the fascist, the Nazi and the communist, began by repudiating the Christian tradition and the moral law. For the first time in 1900 years, a revolution attempted to seize not political power nor economic wealth, but the various souls of men. If these revolutions did look to the past, it was not to a living, historical past as a man uses his memory, but to a primitive, prehistoric, barbaric past as a man might trace his hands as we back to the baboon. The fascist revolution, for example, at least in theory and in principle, skipped 1900 years of Christian tradition in Italy. And for the inspiration of his new order, went back to the imperialism of Caesar Augustus. The Nazi revolution blotted out 1400 years of its Christian history, and went back to the prehistoric Nordics to vote on and to the forest names of the Nibbola and Saga. The communist revolution repudiated a thousand years of Christianity which was incidentally so deeply rooted in the Russian soul. That the Russian word for peasant and the Russian word for Christian were the same. And this revolution gave the Russian people now other ties with the past than those primitive memories of prehistoric cutting and beating symbolized by a hammer and a stickle. This substitution of emotional activism for spiritual heritage, this amnesia which made men forget the traditions which made them great, has brought us to a day where we fear tomorrow, because we have no yesterdays to light the way. And where we all act like dull tragedians not knowing what the future holds, because we have forgotten the past. This universal organized attack upon the moral foundation of society creates a problem. What are men of goodwill going to do about it? They must unite. There must be a common front against the common effort. Our holy Father calls it a common danger. So it is. It is common to Jews, to Protestants and to Catholics. It makes no distinction between them, to these evil forces we are all in the same boat. And so I say men of goodwill, and unite, the crisis today is not religious, it is cultural. The coming of totalitarianism created a new problem for a divided man not on the basis of their religion, but on the question of whether rights came from God or from the state. The new division, which the enemy has forced upon us, is God or anti-God. Men of goodwill, Jews and Protestants and Catholics, unite. Unite because of principles which once were taken for granted, because beyond legal controversy or human manipulation are today challenged. When Thomas Jefferson, for example, wrote the Declaration of Independence, he stated that it was self-evident that man's rights came to us from God to Creator. When the Catholic hierarchy of the United States paraphrase that statement of Jefferson recently, a backwater press labeled it, fascism. The fact is that what was once self-evident to our founding fathers, namely that our rights come to us from God, is not today regarded as self-evident in our country. Hence unite men of goodwill. This conflict has moved from the defense of the supernatural to the defense of the human, from the higher levels of Christian doctrine to the lower levels of the natural law. The struggle today does not center around the affinity or trans-abstantiation, but around the very minimal moral conditions for preserving even the very vestige of civilization. Imagine a Catholic and a Protestant and a forest, arguing about some problem in religion, for example, people in favor of liberty, and attempting to settle it by muscular Christianity. They are suddenly attacked by a lion. What will they do? Well, they will later up their controversy to do battle against the common enemy. In light manner, the forces that work today are animal. Demonic, anti-human, the human must assert itself against the anti-human, never before in the history of Christian stabilization, as the cause of God and man, of Christianity and democracy, then as nearly identical as they are at this very hour. At least, lately, men of goodwill have realized that the defeat of God in every instance is the defeat of man. While the anti-modal forces are united, the state is becoming stronger, more centralized, the spiritual forces are becoming weaker, more decentralized. The Jew protests against the persecution of his people, but he ignores the persecution of Christians. The Christians protest against the persecution of their people, but they ignore the persecution of the Jews. It should be elementary to all of us that where basic rights are concerned, men of goodwill should be united. No man has a right to protest against the persecution. Unless he condemns it irrespective of where he finds it, and irrespective of who is persecuted, whether it be a Jew, a Protestant or a Catholic. Someday I hope to see a parade in the ark in which Jews will carry banners protesting against the persecution of Christians. They will be accompanied by Christians baring banners protesting against the persecution of Jews. Persecution is not exclusively anti-Semitic. Persecution is not exclusively anti-Christian. Persecution is anti-human. And think not that this plea that I am making now for a unity of men of goodwill between Jews and Protestants and Catholics is born of an admission of weakness on the part of the church, or that I think the church is in danger. There is no danger for the church, and will last until the consummation of time. For in vain will men look for the death of the undying or the breaking of the rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. The church has survived near-als and Julian's and omissions and barbarian invasions, and it will live to sing rake Williams over Hitler and all of his fellow dictators. Now it is not the sanctuary that is in danger. It is civilization. It is not in solidarity that may go down. It is personal rights. It is not the Eucharist that may pass away. It is freedom of conscience. It is not divine justice that may evaporate. It is the courts of human justice. It is not that we fear that God may be driven from his throne. It is rather that we fear that men may lose the meaning of home. It is not that this war may never end. It is that peace may never come. Our peace will come only to those who give glory to God. Men of good will, unite, Jews, Protestants and Catholics. It is not the church that is in danger. It is the world. God love you. For the Lord Jesus Christ, who in thy mercy hear of the prayers of sinners, for for us we beseech thee all grace and blessings upon our country and its citizens. We pray in particular for our president, for our Congress, for all who defend us in ships, whether on the seas or in the skies, for all who are suffering the hardships of war, we pray for all who are in peril or in danger. Bring us all after the troubles of this life into the haven of peace and reunite us all together for ever O dear Lord, in thy glorious heavenly kingdom. Monsignor Sheen has just delivered an address entitled Call to Unity. Copies of Monsignor Sheen's talk may be obtained by writing to the National Council of Catholic men, Washington DC, or to the station to which you are now listening. The Blessed Sacrament Choir now sings the traditional English-yool-tied carol, God-rest-Gee-Mary for the sins that so long of the pain, understaff you all happy New Year, happy New Year, and on say New Year, happy New Year. The Blessed Sacrament Choir directed by Warren A. Foley sings the familiar composition list to the lock by the American composer, Clarence Dickinson. Sara Herty forgets your really gentle performance. the the style In today's program, the choir of the Blessed Sacrament Church, New York City, under Warrant A. Foldey provided the music, and we welcome back to the Catholic hour the right Reverend Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen, who gave the first of a series of 16 talks under the general title One Lord one World. Copies of Monsignor Sheen's talk may be obtained by writing to the National Council of Catholic Men, Washington, DC, or to the station to which he were now listening. Next week, Monsignor Sheen will discuss in the Catholic hour that particular kind of unity that is possible for Jews, Protestants, and Catholics, for men of good will. We shall also hear music by the choir of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, New York City. Your announcer is John Patrick Costello. The National Council of Catholic Men has presented the Catholic hour through the facilities of the National Broadcasting Company and its independent affiliated stations, which have been made available as a public service and as a contribution to the religious life of America.