Peace

As the beginning of Lent last week reminded Christians throughout the world of the last days on earth of the Prince of Peace, churchmen were everywhere considering with renewed soberness the tenuous prospect of peace on earth. Though many Protestant clergymen are out & out pacifists, most Catholics have been restrained on that subject. Newsworthy was it, therefore, when an eminent Catholic divine opened Lent with a ringing pastoral letter on the subject of peace. He was the Most Rev. John Timothy McNicholas, the forceful, ruddy Dominican who for 13 years has been Archbishop of Cincinnati. He wrote:

"Governments that have no fixed standards of morality, and consequently no moral sense, can scarcely settle the question of war on moral grounds for Christians, . . . who see and know the injustice of practically all wars in our modern pagan world. There is the very practical question for informed Christians who acknowledge the supreme dominion of God. . . . WILL SUCH CHRISTIANS IN OUR COUNTRY FORM A MIGHTY LEAGUE OF CONSCIENTIOUS NON-COMBATANTS?"

Archbishop McNicholas, who helped found the Legion of Decency, did not suggest any practical means of founding a league of noncombatants. He did, however, urge Catholics to "pray especially for the President of the U. S. who, until recent months, seemed adamant against committing this country to war."

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