Catholics on Three Fronts

Evidence of a schism between U.S. mores and the thinking of the Roman Catholic Church came from three widely scattered quarters last week. From South America came word of Catholic suspicion of the U.S. From Itaty came Axis praise for Catholic isolationism in this country.

From the Jesuit weekly America came a sharp attack on the U.S. Army's sex regulations as "a direct incitement to vicious courses."

Latin Catholics. Speaking through New York Timesman Harold Callender, Catholic leaders in South America let it be known that most of them view U.S. policies with suspicion, partly because this country is predominantly Protestant and partly because it is just plain nonreligious, which results in its having a low moral standard.

On his four-month tour through the ten South American republics, just-returned Reporter Callender "consulted cardinals, priests, monks and outstanding lay leaders. . . . All, without exception, confirmed the existence of the suspicions and . . . none even hinted that it was advisable from any point of view to conceal them or to gloss over them."

Callender-cited reasons for this distrust:

> Fears of anti-Catholic influences in the U.S., which in the past made the U.S. too friendly with anticlerical regimes in Mexico, in Spain.

> Dislike of U.S. Protestant missions to overwhelmingly Catholic countries. In Peru, a leading priest complained that Peruvian Protestants educated in the U.S. tended to support the left, anticlerical parties when they returned home.

Said an eminent Chilean Catholic: ''Even American priests are regarded as not quite Catholic, or as representing a form of Catholicism not desired here. . . . The Conservatives here dislike democracy and want a Chilean Franco to suppress the Popular Front."

Questioned by TIME on the Callender report, Argentine priests and laymen substantially confirmed it. One monsignor complained that American Catholics are snobbish and look down on their poor Argentine brothers.

Circumspect was polished, amiable Santiago Luis Cardinal Copello, Archbishop of Buenos Aires and Primate of Argentina. Said he: "Official censuses . . . show a deplorably high percentage of North Americans to be without religion, but it is not possible on that basis to qualify the whole country or its government as anti-religious."

Questioned the same way, Brazilian Catholics considered the U.S. lackadaisical regarding religion. But they took sharp exception to the Callender report that U.S. priests represent a form of Catholicism not desired in South America. Said Father Helder Camara, an executive of Brazil's Catholic Action:

"Brazilians should learn from their North American brothers to give ever stronger social sense to our activities and should coordinate our common forces." Brazilian Catholics have asked for American priest-missionaries at Mato Grosso and Goyaz.

Fascist Tribute. The former secretary of Italy's Fascist Party, Roberto Farinacci, last week proclaimed the dean of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy "a holy man."

Anent William Cardinal O'Connell of Boston, Fascist Farinacci wrote:

"Today the great majority of Catholics constitute a bloc in the Axis spiritual forces. ... In America it is not true that the clergy is on Roosevelt's side. Cardinal

O'Connell attacked President Roosevelt's policy . . . adding that 'all know what form of government there is in the U.S., where only deaf mutes have freedom of speech.' . . . O'Connell is a holy man."

Attack on the Army. In last week's America, the Rev. Paul L. Blakely, S.J., denounced the Army for 1) stocking contraceptives designed to prevent venereal infection, 2) operating prophylactic stations as a further preventive. "The psychological effect on the young soldier of this elaborate setup," said Father Blakely, "conveys, almost irresistibly, the impression that the Government expects him to indulge in riotous courses."

Army men reply that the U.S. Army is the only one in the world which does not recognize and control prostitution; its orders are to destroy it. It does not encourage prostitution, advises soldiers against it. But it has had no more luck in completely abolishing sex than the human race heretofore has had, though it works hard to keep conditions round the Army camps clean.

Typical Army practice is that of Camp Polk, headquarters of the maneuver area in Louisiana where some 250,000 Third Army soldiers will take part in war games this month and next. Said a Camp Polk release last week:

"Vice is out. . . . Military and civil authorities have clamped down on every known house of prostitution in the maneuver area, and are putting under quarantine all persons in the infectious stages of venereal diseases. Trailer girls are prohibited in the maneuver area. Gambling houses are being closed down daily, and places of a doubtful nature are being constantly watched."

But the Army's problem is not only moral (see p. 35) but physical. Venereal disease during World War I cost it 6,500,000 man-days (time lost in hospital). In 1917 one of the ways the Army tried to stamp out VD was to punish every soldier who became infected. Now the Army punishes a soldier for not reporting infection so that he can be cured, takes practical preventive measures to keep him from being infected in the first place. Typical result: at Fort Benning, Ga. the venereal rate has been cut from 4.6% to 0.41% in the last year.

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