• TORCH FOR TOLERANCE
• ape ep• **se •■■■••••••■••••■•■•■•• ilainly for Women, ....•....
TWO things have made me
want to talk about another minority in our Midst this week. One was this senseless surge of racial rioting which must have been fostered by persons not even pretending to be Christians; the other that on Monday we celebrated the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin and today (Friday) is the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary.
The pagan prejudices and the Catholic celebrations would appear to be so far apart that there is no apparent connection between them. But isn't there? Somewhere in the families of those hate-blinded adolescents there surely was a Christian mother or grandmother, possibly even a Catholic one.
Persecution of a minority, black or white. is beastly enough when carried out by adults; hut, when children and teen-agers indulge in it, watched and encouraged by adults, then it is the time to ask what were the mothers and grandmothers or other Christian relatives of these children doing ?
The lesson to be learned from these shocking happenings is that it is not enough to pay lip-service to Christianity. It is not enough to teach our children that we are all alike in God's eyes.
We must go further. We must make our children see and feel what it must be like to have been born into a minority or to have come to live in a country where our colour, our race or our religion make us the butt of crude insults. the object of physical violence.
'THE GLORIOUS RACE OF DAVID'
wHICH brings me to the other " minority I mentioned: the people of Israel known as the Jews. And to the celebrations of the Catholics this week. For was not Our Lady a Jewess ? Was not Our Lord born into a Jewish family and were not the first disciples Jews ?
The first antiphon of Vespers for the Nativity of Our Lady says:
This is the Nativity of the glorious Virgin Mary, of the seed of Abraham, sprung from the tribe of Jude, of the glorious race of David.
In many books I have read the story of the Passion of Christ in which the Jews are shown as responsible for his death. I have heard the same preached from many pulpits. It is, of course, historically true. But it is equally true that many of Our Lord's first followers were Jews.
I feel most strongly that it is the
man, grows up through the Law and the Prophets. and is fulfilled in the Master Mind in person, when God "came unto his own, and his own received him not ..."
That is too much to consider here, we have been trying to show that "time after Pentecost" is not simply a dull plodding on, an anticlimax between the Crib and the Resurrection. It is the time when we put into practice, in patient hard work, the hopes of the promise of the Faith, that we may at the end enter into His glory. Therefore one cannot agree with the explanatory note in a certain well-known missal, which explains that green is chosen because it is the "neutral colour in nature", as this is presumably the "neutral" season in the life of the Church. There is nothing neutral about growing up fast and strenuously into sanctity !
The Church seems to feel this as well. for, I wonder, have we noticed that she crowns this period of hard plodding work towards the harvest with her own harvest festival—the Feast, on the last Sunday of October. of "Christ the King"?
And when the blade was sprung up, and had brought forth Emit, then appeared also the cockle . . . And he said to them: "An enemy has done this".
And hie servants said to him: "Wilt thou that we go and gather it up?" But he said: "No . . .
suffer both to grow until the harvest, and at the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers,
gather up first the cockle, and bind it in bundles to
burn. but the wheat gather ye inks my hdrn . . 13:26).
duty of every Catholic woman, married or single. to carry the torch of tolerance and understandingeverywhere she goes, hut particularly among children — for they are the future generations and among them there should be no hate,
WRONGDOERS AMONG THEM
IT would be foolish to pretend that all coloured people are good and well-behaved, any more than one would assume that all Jews, all Catholics, all Protestants, or all Teddy boys are angels of light and never do wrong or behave badly. We know that none of us is without sin.
But. if a small percentage of coloured people, or Jews, or Catholics. or Protestants do some outrageous things, do we condemn the whole race or religion? Do we say that, because a few Teddy boys are hooligans, all Teddy boys arc vicious and bad ? Because a few Catholics do not properly understand their faith and do not act according to Catholic principles. do we then say that the faith itself is at fault ?
No, indeed, we are sorry for the Catholic who has sinned and, if it lies within our power, we would help him. Should we not do just that with all minorities or persecuted peoples ? Good and bad is not only mixed in nations and races, it is even mixed in each one of is
A VOW TO OUR LADY
kAJOULD it not then be a tine " thing if we Catholic women made a special vow to Our Lady this week to fight with all our power intolerance, ignorance. and prejudice against minority races ? For she who is the most gentle and loving of all women would surely welcome such a fight, and would perhaps answer our prayers to intercede with Our Lord that He may ease all bitterness which exists between coloured a n d white. between Jess. and Gentile.
THE GOOD SAMARITAN
I thanked him and said it was good of him to have stopped. " I'd have liked you to have done the same for inc." he said as he waved good-bye.
i ApALL SORTS pears on page 4
A SHOR r while ago I was return" ing by car from Devon. About a mile and a half from home I ran out of petrol. It was a fairly busy country road with little pedestrian traffic but plenty of cars. We had been driving for seven hours in pouring rain and were feeling tired and miserable. This seemed the last straw. When we got out •to investigate we also found that the luggage rack, complete with luggage. was nearly off the roof.
We debated the easiest way to get out of our difficulty. Before starting a mile hike to the nearest garage, I thought I'd try tipping a bottle of lighter fuel into the tank.
This has got me to a garage on more than one occasion. All this while, cars had flashed by and none had stopped.
was just pouring the remains of my lighter fuel into the tank when a magnificent new car passed, slowed. and stopped in front of us. A young man got out and asked if he could help. He could. After fixing the luggage rack for me he then drove me to the nearest garage; we borrowed a can and he drove me back again to my waiting car. He said he was on his way to a date with his girl.
I noticed he had a bit of a brogue, and so I said: " I think St. Christopher must have sent you to help us." He was so surprised that he nearly ran us into a tree. " What," he cried. " are you a
Catholic ? We exchanged a little local Catholic news, then he went.