Mackintosh to the Rescue

In Great Britain last week the new encyclical of Pope Pius XI (TIME, June 1) was widely termed "political" because His Holiness said:

"No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist."

Politicians of the British Labor (Socialist) party called on Socialist James Ramsay MacDonald to reply. They feared a "whispering campaign" in the next British election among Catholic voters. Whisper: "You can't vote Labor. The Pope meant that you must vote either Liberal or Conservative."

"I am waiting," said Scot MacDonald crisply, "to hear some authoritative pronouncement by British Catholics as to what the encyclical means."

No prominent English, Irish or Welsh Catholic pronounced last week. In Glasgow, however, Archbishop Mackintosh pronounced as follows: "No Catholic may or can bind himself or herself hand and foot to any political party without departing from his or her status as a Catholic."

This mollified those Socialists who took it to mean that Mackintosh of Glasgow, by a method akin to famed reductio ad absurdum, was making it possible for Catholics in his archdiocese to vote for any party because their religion divorces them from all.

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