American McCarran Act Cited Against a Papal Archbishop.
As reported in the “Daily Express” of 18th February last, Mr. Paul Blanshard, American author of an outstanding book, American Freedom and Catholic Power (which book was reviewed in this Magazine some time ago by Rev. James MacLeod), has given a diplomatic problem to Mr. John Foster Dulles, U.S. Secretary of State.
For Mr. Blanshard, who has been six months in Eire gathering material for a book, yesterday filed a petition at the U.S. Embassy in Dublin asking Mr. Dulles to revoke the American citizenship of Archbishop Gerald Patrick O’Hara, Papal Nuncio to Ireland.
He filed his petition under the McCarran Act and based it on the grounds that the 52-year-old archbishop is violating this new U.S. security law by serving as a diplomat of the Vatican.
Mr. Blanshard cited Section 349 of the Act. This prohibits an American citizen from “performing the duties of any office, post or employment under the government of a foreign state” requiring an oath of allegiance.
The archbishop, says Mr. Blanshard, was obliged to take an oath of allegiance to the Vatican as Papal Nuncio a year ago.
The penalty provided in the McCarran Act is “unconditional obligatory revocation of the American citizenship.”
Mr. Blanshard, in his Dublin hotel headquarters, tonight handed out copies of the petition and explained why he filed it.
He said: “My action raises for the first time in American law the question whether an American citizen can serve as a Vatican diplomat. I want to dramatise the fact that the Roman Catholic Church is both a State and a Church.
“I am opposed to the encroachments of the Catholic Church on such territories as education, medicine and censorship.
“The petition will be forwarded by the embassy to Mr. Dulles. If he satisfies himself that the facts are such as I claim then he has no option but to issue a certificate of loss of nationality to the archbishop.
“Of course, Dr. O’Hara can then become a Vatican citizen if he so wishes—he already possesses an American passport and a Vatican diplomatic passport.”
Mr. Blanshard is no supporter of the McCarran Act, but believes that it should be impartially enforced—”against the Right as well as the Left.”
He emphasised that his action in filing the petition is concerned “with the political situation which it reveals and not the religious side of it.”
It is evident that Mr. Blanshard is an alert man, and it will be highly interesting to hear the result of this unusual petition.
A Vicar Gives Unchristian and Irresponsible Advice.
According to press reports during January last, the Rev. H. Thomas, 64-year-old vicar of Needham Market, near Ipswich, thinks that the villages of England should open a barrel of beer on their village greens on Coronation Day. He said: “It is quite in order to have this once in a lifetime. And if a few of us take a little too much to drink it will not matter so very much. Rather let’s have a bit of a spree—there is nothing very sinful in that.” It was reported that Mr. Thomas was to suggest later that folk-dancing and ox-roasting should also take place. And so this professed leader of people in Christianity proposes drinking, dancing and the pagan rite of ox-roasting, as if the people of England had not enough of drink, dancing and paganism already. Extended comment seems unnecessary to those who are seeing the signs of the times. “Blind leaders of the blind” are everywhere, and many of the people love to have it so, as also Church authorities.
Ministers in Concert Party.
We give the following excerpts from a letter to the public press on 5th February last, from the pen of Mr. Wm. Ramsay of Green Shadows, Callander:—”A single test-tube explosion wiped out a small
island in the Pacific in November . . .” “And five Scottish ministers of the Gospel are going around as a concert party, ‘two of them excellent comedians.’ These are people whose lives have been ‘consecrated’ to the service of God, the only Person who can save the nations from destruction.” “A chaplain to the Wrens sent messages to his congregation, mostly containing reports of the folk-dancing classes that he was running with these young Service women . . . But what has this to do with the Gospel? It is surely not because we need dancing masters or comedians that we put money in the plate at Church! In the crisis which faces us our military and political chiefs have other things to occupy them than concert troupes and dancing classes. I write as a Christian to protest against comedians in dog-collars—it is an affront to a world in travail.” We heartily endorse every word of Mr. Ramsay’s, and this is not the first time he has endeavoured with his pen to expose corrupt and worldly practises in the professed Christian Church in Scotland.
Unscriptural Advice by Child Guidance Organiser.
At a Churchmen’s conference in Glasgow on 17th February last, Mr. Leslie H. Duncan, Ayrshire, child guidance organiser, was one of the speakers. And what a dangerous speaker! Among other foolish and flippant remarks concerning the rendering by children of the 23rd Psalm and their views of the “Fatherhood of God,” he is reported to have given the following advice:—”Leave behind the lesson that Jesus is meek and mild. We want to teach the heroism and adventure in Christianity. If you don’t they will make their own heroes and yell themselves hoarse . . .” We feel that part of the above advice borders on blasphemy, and is positively wicked. Part of the glory of Jesus in the days of His humiliation was that He was “meek and lowly,” and He declared of Himself, “For I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” The youth of to-day if they need anything in their moral character, need a return to a meek and quiet spirit which in the sight of God is of great price. Who was more courageous and zealous for God’s glory than Moses with all his meekness? And more important still, the true Christian is to follow the example of the “meek and lowly” Jesus. And finally, whatever Mr. Duncan is, in our opinion he is not a fit person to be a child guidance organiser, as his own utterances are childish in the light of the Bible and he has great need himself of guidance by the Holy Spirit.
Ecclesiastical Critics of Scriptural Sabbath Observance.
Since the welcome defeat of The Sunday O’ servance Bill, introduced to Parliament by Mr. John Parker, M.P., at the end of January, two prominent Churchmen, Rev. Dr. George MacLeod, leader of the Iona Community, and Dr. Cyril Garbett, Archbishop of York, have revealed their modern views regarding God’s holy day. Dr. MacLeod writes in the March issue of the Church of Scotland’s Life and Work in
relation to the Lord’s Day Observance Society, which did such good work in opposing the aforementioned Bill: “At times they show signs of perceiving the real issues at stake: at others their apparent pronouncements are reminiscent of letters written by Mrs. Grundy from a separate room in Bedlam . . . For instance, was the association, or was it not, officially opposed to young people in slums kicking a football about in a park on Sunday afternoon? If it was, then he for one was in no doubt that the association must share some of the responsibility for these young people kicking other people about on a Sunday.” The question is of course typical of modern religious critics and the Dr.’s conclusions upon an affirmative answer are mere drivel and cant. Observers of God’s commandments are for the Fourth Commandment, the learned Dr. MacLeod is for a Sabbath of man’s making. Yet, let some so-called orthodox Scottish Christians read further what Dr. MacLeod writes. He criticises those clamouring for a return to Victorian severity. He had seen them taking Sunday trams—that was using Sunday labour—and not one but read his Monday morning newspaper, which had obviously meant considerable Sunday employment to produce it for them. We would remind Dr. MacLeod that there are in Scotland those who respect the Sabbath Day, and do not take trams in the cities on that day, and who do not read the Monday morning newspapers. And so let the lukewarm observers of the Sabbath, to whom we referred in the Free Presbyterian Magazine for March, recognise that the keen eye of the enemies of the Sabbath are upon them. And as a note to this: some time ago Free Church leaders in the South of Scotland refused to forbid officially their members from travelling by trams on the Lord’s Day. But the modernistic leader of the Iona Community is watching profession and practice in others. As for Dr. Garbett, the Archbishop, he follows the up-to-date pattern of many Churchmen who do not know really what they stand for. He wrote in a diocesan letter at the end of February, “I was glad that the House rejected a Bill which would have swept away indiscriminately existing Sunday legislation.” Then further, he writes: “It was futile to imagine that Sunday as a day given solely to worship and rest could ever be restored. Christians had no right to attempt to enforce by law on a secular world their views on Sunday observance.” So we are left with the situation of this Archbishop being glad Sabbath observance legislation was not swept away, and the same gentleman condemning enforcement by law of Sabbath observance. His own people may know where he stands on this question, but we know where he does not stand, viz., on the side of the Fourth Commandment. The Archbishop made it clear in his letter that he did not wish to interfere unduly with those who wished to spend the Sabbath away from home after public worship, and if conscience allowed they could play games, and so on. What mist and darkness pervades the minds and outlook of many prominent professed Christian leaders relative to the claims and
honour of God! We fail to find with Dr. George MacLeod or Archbishop Dr. Garbett any condemnation of the widespread, serious sin of Sabbath desecration or any expression of grief at the national backsliding in this respect. “Help, Lord: for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men” (Ps. xii. 1).
The Death of Josef Stalin—Russian Dictator.
The Russian dictator, Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili, or Stalin the Man of Steel as he called himself, was born in 1880, of humble parentage, in a village in Georgia. He died on Tuesday, the 5th day of March, 1953, at the age of 73, as the result of a brain hemorrhage. After the death of Lenin 1924 he plotted against Trotsky, his main rival for supreme power in Soviet Russia, and had him banished. His secret police searched out his foes and he sent hundreds to the firing squad. Although his rise to power and as a world figure in politics was remarkable, yet he was an evil genius. He was the mind behind a godless ideology and political system. His death is no loss to the world, in our opinion. It remains to be seen what his successors will be like and how they will act. The people of Russia have need that God would free them, and other smaller nations, from the shackles of Communism and open the doors of Eastern Europe to that freedom which alone comes by the power and influence of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Wise Words on Crime by the Home Secretary.
Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, M.P., the Home Secretary, spoke on the crime problem on Saturday, the 28th February last. He was reported to have then said that this problem can only be solved in the end by a return to higher moral standards. Crime, he said, was a symptom of decline in morals and integrity, in our national and family life. There was the need for the help of the Church, other organisations, teachers and parents, etc. He declared that some of the causes of the crime problem were homes lacking parental control, comic newspapers for young people, certain types of films, and the fact that religion had not the sanction it used to have. We were indeed heartened when the report of what the Home Secretary said came to our notice. Speaking, no doubt, as a politician and a member of the present Government, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, in the expression of his views on the above subject, put religious leaders to shame who have recently so unworthily expressed themselves upon such a subject as Sabbath observance. The decline in morals to which Sir David refers must surely include the abandonment of a Scriptural observance of the Lord’s Day. Of course, although men and nations are responsible to God for their sins and transgressions, we learn from the Bible that a return to higher moral standards can only come about by the return of God to us as a nation in mercy and power.