REV. JOSEPH MANTON, C.SS.R. 





The Bridge to 

Better Living 

. Nine addresses delivered on the Catholic Hour from January 3, 1954 

through February 28, 1954 by the Rev. Joseph Manton, C.SS.R. The 

program is produced by the Natiollal Council of Catholic Men in 

cooperation with the National Broadcasting Company. 

BY 

REV. JOSEPH MANTON, C.SS.R. 

First Edition 5,000 
April 19, 1954 

National Council of Catholic Men 
1312 Massachusetts Avenue, N. W. 

Washington 5, D. C. 

Printed and distributed by Our Sunday Visitor 

Huntinlrton, Indiana 

~1 



Nihi l Obstat: 

REV. EDWARD A. MILLER 

Censor Librorum 

Imprimatur: 

+ JOHN FRANCIS NOLL, D.D. 
Bishop of Fort Wayne 

· 1)eacldtfte 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

In A Glass, Darkly 5 

Highway To Heaven 9 

The Lock In Wedlock .......... ........... .. ........ ........................... .......................... 14 

January Inventory ....... .................................................... ............ ........ ............. 19 

Queen Of The Commonplace ............................. ......... .................................. 23 

No Strange Gods .......................................................................... .................. 27 

A Perplexed Patron ..... ...... ............ .................. ...... ..... ............. ..................... 31 

Keep The Door Open ......... ............................. ........ ...................................... 35 ' 

Outstretched Hands ....... .... .. ...................... .................. ................................... 40 





I N A GLASS, DARKLY 

Address Delivered on January 3, 1954 

Up our way the windows of 
the department stores are al-
ready draped with the radiant 
white of the Annual Linen Sale 
like an indoor January snow-
storm. This is a surer sign than 
the last burning, crackling 
Christmas Tree that the holi-
days are really over. The point 
of this post-holiday homily is 
to remark and regret that for 
some people (and for more ' this 
year than last because it is in-
creasing all the time)-for 
some people the holidays went 
down with one stupendous 
gurgle, almost like a sinking 
ship, only with them it wasn't 
water-unless you want to call 
it fire-water. 

Preceding the festive season 
(for these people it isn't the 
Holy Season, but just the holly 
season) magazine ads glow like 
a lit-up juke box with techni-
color testimony to the convivial 
warmth of bottles blazing with 
the heraldry of red roses, gold-
en crowns, white feathers. 
Nothing is ever said there 
(though I think something 
should be said here) of the 
thorns that may lurk under the 
roses, the hang-over headaches 
that can gr'oan under too many 
crowns, and the cowardice that 
sometimes shows behind the 
white feather. 

But-and let us make this 

distinction at once and put it in . 
sharp italics. What is wrong is 
not the use of liquor, but the 
abuse. You have only to look at 
that vivid vignette in the Gos-
pels where the Saviour Himself 
in the midst of the wedding 
banquet changed water into 
wine, to realize that the normal, 
moderate, temperate use of al-
coholic beverages is perfectly all 
right. But you have only to look 
at the increasing, intemperate, 
immoderate, abnormal con-
sumption of liquor to know that 
is all wrong. Orators sometimes 
appeal to "sober statistics." That 
is not exactly the word here, Qut 
there are few people (except 
perhaps those that get stiff at 
bars or silly at parties) who 
would not concede that he~vy 
drinking is coming on with 
staggering strides. 

It is true that perhaps a priest 
does not get a balanced view. It 
is true he sees so much of the 
sickening effects of the abuse of 
drink in his parish rounds (be-
cause these are the families he 
has to visit and help) that he 
doesn't get a fair picture. But 
he cannot forget what he has 
seen-and this is the point-
and is seeing more often now 
than ever before. It is the im-
pression in this corner (because 
I cannot of course speak for 
other priests) that if a man 



6 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

wants to dig his grave financial- hulk of a man. I'm ashamed to 
ly, or physically, or morally, he tell you his nationality. He had 
could not choose a better tool · six of the most beautiful child-
than a corkscrew. 

Sometimes on a lovely Sun-
day afternoon, traffic will jam 
up at some avenue entering the 
city. Policemen will tell you, 
sometimes profanely, that "This 
congested bridge" or "That nar-
row street"-is the whole 
trouble. It's the bottle-neck! In 
the same way, when you find a 
home where the children are in 
tatters, and the mother is a 
broken-hearted martyr, and the 
home itself like a tiny suburb 
of hell-trace back the cause, 
and you will find it too is a 
bottle-neck. A brown bottle-
neck! 

Take the man, if you can call 
him that, who presides over 
such a home. Respectability, re-
sponsibility, integrity, even se-
curity-what do they mean to 
him? 

Put them all in one scale of 
the balance, and in the other 
put a whiskey bottle. Does any-
one doubt which one he will 
dive for, almost die for? Be-
cause he is half-sponge and 
half-jellyfish. These are not just 
abusive words flung out like 
tracer-bullets. I think that in 
zoology there is a close relation 
between a sponge and a jelly-
fish. I know that in life a 
drunkard is a sponge when it 
comes to absorbing liquor, but 
a jellyfish without backbone 
when it comes to saying "No." 

Twenty years ago in another 
city I knew a fine handsome 

ren I have ever seen. And many 
an evening they cowered in the 
doorway of a neighboring tene-
ment, as Daddy came swagger-
ing up the stoop wildly drunk, 
shouting out that he had just 
seen two antelopes with yo-yo's. 
Yes, they were afraid of him, 
but most of all they were 
ashamed. And shame in the 
heart of a child burns like a hot 
coal. 

He lost his job, because it is 
quite a trick to hold a bottle 
and ' a job at once. He began to 
throw things about at home, and 
was sent to jail for thirty days. 
I visited him there, brought 
him cigarettes, helped get him 
out for Christmas. I'll never for-
get that Christmas Eve after-
noon. We had got a tree for the 
family, and gifts for the child-
ren from a Welfare Society, and 
there he crouched, trimming the 
tree, the children around him, 
the first snow sifting down out-
side like a lace curtain. It was 
like a storybook. I went back to 
Church to hear confessions with 
bells ringing in my heart-And 
I found out that just one half-
hour later, he clapped on his 
hat, walked out to the nearest 
tavern, and was carried in dead 
drunk late that night! 

Is there any moral to it? I 
don't know. Sometimes I think 
such a man would be better 
dead than just dead drunk. 
Sometimes I think it has gone 
so far that only a miracle in re-



IN A GLASS, DARKLY 7 

verse-Our Blessed Lord chang-
ing the wine into water-could 
do any good. But at least we 
can warn the perhaps unsus-
pecting young. Maybe I look 
very simple, but you would be 
surprised how often a girl will 
come up and tentatively begin 
to tell me all about her boy-
friend . . . how handsome he is 
and how courteous and how 
ambitious and how clever, and 
maybe that he has wavy hair 
and three dimples. And then it 
comes out. It seems he has only 
one fault. Every six or eight 
weeks he drinks far too much. 
But the girl hurries on to say, 
"But, Father, this shouldn't pre-
vent our marriage, should it? 
After all, only once every two 
months-I could put up with 
that. I should marry him, 
shouldn't I?" And her eyelashes 
go up like an awning in expec-
tation. I don't think she gets the 
answer she wants. My answer 
is, "Girl, for your own sake, for 
your whole life's sake, for your 
future family's sake, for God's 
sake-don't risk marrying a 
sponge! If you throw a wedding 
ring into a puddle, it won't dry 
up the puddle. The ring will be 
lost and stained on the bottom!" 

Aside from the personal un-
happiness that often pops out 
with the cork, consider the 
abuse of liquor, and Sin. There 
are critics of English literature 
who think that our language has 
no lovelier lines than those used 
by the poet (Crashaw, I think) 
to describe the very miracle of 
the changing of the water into 

wine at Cana. He says, "The 
modest water saw its God, and 
blushed"-blushed into crimson 
wine. And well might the wine 
blush red! Red for all the future 
abuse of liquor! Red for the red 
and purple-veined noses of ' 
drunkards which burn (if it be 
not blasphemous to say so) like 
sanctuary lights before their 
God, because of such St. Paul 
says, "Their god is their belly." 
Red for the red ink of bills and 
debts piled up in the drunkard's 
home. Red for the red blood 
spilled in bar-room brawls-
and there is no more pathetic 
sight on this old earth than a 
human being lying there, per-
haps dying there, in a drunken 
stupor, his glassy eyes staring 
upward like the eyes of a dead 
fish. 

The wine blushed red. Red for 
the red traffic lights through 
which heavy-drinking drivers 
heedlessly speed. Red for the 
red tail-lights when they come 
to a stop in a lonely lane. When 
they drive, they are a menace to 
life and limb; and when they 
park, they are a menace to mor-
ality. Red for the red blushes 
of the young girl who first finds 
out that it is not "Wine, woman 
and song"-but wine, woman 
and wrong! Don't ' these girls 
realize that alcohol blurs the 
brain like a fog, unleashes pas-
sions like a wild beast, snaps 
will-power like a toothpick? 
And that in some circumstances 
a little liquor is too much! 
Otherwise why is it that later 
on when people bring their sad 



8. BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

story to a rectory parlor they 
so often end, "That's all, Fa-
ther, except--€xcept it never 
would have happened, if I had-
n't been drinking." 

With God or His Church there 
is no double standard, but even 
more r evolting than a man "un-
der the influence" as the kind-
ly phrase has it, is a tipsy, 
maudlin woman. I can imagine 
a type of man who might want 
to pass an evening with a paint-
ed, fragile toy of a girl who 
could lift cocktail after cock-
tail with him, and who might 
even be a switch drinker-that 
is when her right arm got tired 
she turned to the left. But I 
can't imagine any man choosing, 
such a creature to be the Queen 
of his home, and the mother of 
his children. Can you imagine a 
grandfather with curling white 
mustachio's dandling his great-
grandson on his knee and say-
ing, "W'hy sure I knew your 
great-grandmother when she 
was a young lady! What did she 
look like? Oh, I can see her now. 
The gold in her hair, the stars in 
her eyes, the roses in her cheeks, 
the bottle at her lips-and the 
words coming out mumbling 
and stumbling as she sat there 
on the sofa loaded with giggle-
water!" 

You may faintly smile, but it 
is never a joke when a woman's 
drinking hurt::. her home. Not 
too long ago I gave a Novena, 
and there was a Petition Box, 
and one of the petitions was 
scrawled in the wide looping 
hand of a boy-you know, they 
get about two words to the line 
-and the note said, "Dear Fa-
ther, I am a boy and I would 
like you to pray for my mother, 
as she drinks a lot. I am making 
this Novena for her. She is a 
good mother when she does not 
drink, and us children need her. 
Hoping this Novena will change 
her. Hoping it will." And with 
all the simplicity of a boy, he 
signed his name. I checked up 
quietly in the parish school, and 
sure enough, there was such a 
boy. Seventh Grade. 

Isn't that sermon enough? I 
pray Our Blessed Lord, through 
the powerful intercession of His 
Mother who saw them push a 
sponge of vinegar into His Holy 
Face, on the cross and He took 
it in reparation for the abuse of 
drink-oh, if there is anyone 
out there who is abusing drink, 
give him the grace to cut it 
down, or if necessary, to cut it 
out! Hoping She will change 
him-hoping She will! God 
bless you! 



HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN 

Address Delivered on January 10, 1954 

Since last we met over the 
air , the Chur ch celebrated a 
feast which, come to think of it, 
I have never heard a Catholic 
layman mention-the Feast of 
Epiphany. Mostly it is called 
the Feast of the Three Kings, 
and at any Christmas Crib last 
week these colorful gentlemen 
had dismounted and parked 
their picturesque camels close 
by. This little talk is not going 
to be about either the camels or 
the kings, except that on Epip-
hany night I was thinking about 
camels as means of transporta-
tion. And I tell you these long-
legged, swaying beasts, loping 
rhythmically, padding silently 
across the desert, seemed to 
have their points. 

You see, from ten at night till 
six in the morning the thor-
oughfare that runs in front of 
our rectory is Big Truck Boule-
vard. And that night they were 
whizzing by so steadily, boom-
ing so heavily under the win-

dow I couldn't get to sleep. Of 
course no preacher should ever 
get insomnia: all he has to do is 
get up and read some of his old 
sermons. But for this I was too 
lazy, and since it was impos-
sible to quiet the trucks and un-
christian to curse them, I just 
lay there thinking about them, 
and the first thing you know it 

seemed they were preaching a 
sermon to me! 

Here they were, cargo camels 
twentieth century style, these 
t rucks, huge battleships of the 
r oad, grey or green or brilliant 
red, outlined with amber bulbs, 
rumbling along with all sorts of 
loads, milk or oil or furniture; 
pair after pair of headlights like 
shining yellow eyes, zooming 
on through the night with a 
sullen roar, riding eventually 
into the pink dawn, then with a 
change of riders, highballing 
along other highways under 
blue skies and into a far-off 
flaming sunset . . . I guess if you 
look hard enough you can see 
adventure and romance even in 
hubcaps and grease. 

Curious thing, though, about 
a truck: The bigger part of it 
(almost like in a human being) 
they call the body. But the 
other part, the more important 
part, is the cab. Almost like the 
soul. Because there, in the cab, 
is what' you might call its prin-

ciple of life, the motor-what 
makes the truck go, and with-
out which the truck would be as 
motionless as a corpse. And in 
that cab turns your steering 
wheel, like free will. You can 
drive right, drive left, even 
drive off the road-but you 
take the consequences. Isn't 



10 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

that what free will means? And 
right beyond the steering wheel 
glows the speedometer, just as 
plain as conscience itself, regis-
tering, reminding you when you 
are overstepping bounds. 

When a truck starts to climb 
a hill it seems almost human the 
way it grinds and grunts and 
inches slowly up, like a man 
with bent head and drooping 
shoulders plodding up the 
slope of trouble. "For the heart 
of a man is a heavy load for a 
man to bear alone." But how 
simple and easy it is for truck 
or man to go roaring downhill! 
It may take a man sixty years to 
become a saint, but he can land 
at the bottom of Skid Row in 
only six months. It all depends 
on who is in control, the soul or 
the body. Put the truck on as 
high a hill as you like. Then, 
up in the cab, shut off the motor 
and release the brake. The body 
of the truck, always eager to 
throw its weight around, will 
exert its pressure and force the 
whole vehicle down, faster and 
faster. It is no different in a 
man's moral life. The body, left 
to itself and all brakes off, has a 
natural inclination to go down-
hill; and if you let it, the end 
must be a wild careening ride 
and a shattered moral wreck. 
Nobody knows this better than 
the fellow who thought he knew 
how far he could go, how far he 
could let his emotions and de-
sires coast along before it would 
be really dangerous and out of 
control. Just let passion get 

rolling a little bit, and it picks 
up fearful momentum. And the 
only . sure way of stopping it is 
never to let it get started. You 
are not a beast; you are a man; 
and the control should be in the 
cab, in the human soul with its 
conscience and its will-power 
and its moral code. Oh the pity 
of it that when you counsel 
modesty and purity to young 
people they think these are the 
steel bars of a jail shutting 
them off from happiness. They 
may be steel bars, all right, 
but they are the steel handrails 
on a bridge, that perilous bridge 
that swings between youth and 
maturity, and only those know 
how necessary they are who 
have fallen off and lie at the 
bottom, bruised and broken. Or, 
to get back to trucks, aren't 
some trucks simply marked "In-
flammable"? 

Most trucking jobs are long 
hauls over the highway toward 
the horizon, and you could 

hardly get a better picture, a 
sharper modern parable of a 

man journeying toward eter-
nity than the driver in the cab 
of his truck as he rolls along 
the grey stretch of road toward 
his far-off, unseen destination. 
The little sign on the windshield 
says, "No Riders," and in the 
cab of his own soul every man 
rides alone. You and nobody 

else has the responsibility for 
you. And every driver has 
basically the same obligation. It 
doesn't matter what kind of 
cargo the truck is carrying, 



HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN 11 

whether it is Christmas trees or 
brand new cars-the idea is al-
ways to get to your destination 
and bring what they expect. 
Isn't it the same way on the 
highway of life? Whether you 
are the conductor of a subway 
car or the conductor of a 
symphony orchestra, the whole 
idea is so to do your work, so 
to live your life that you will 
be doing what God wants and 
eventually reach your journey's 
end, Heaven. 

Ask the average truck driver 
what are his thoughts as he sits 
behind the wheel, and you find 
the one constant overpowering 
thought is just to get where he 
is going. What he passes along 
the way is of very minor con-
sideration. Enchanting scen-
ery, eye-catching bill-boards, 
famous landmarks - these he 
goes wheeling past with hardly 
a glance. They are on his route, 
but he is on his way! His eyes 
are focused on the road, his 
thoughts fixed on the goal. All 
the rest is trivial. The orily 
thing that matters is reach the 
right address and deliver the 
goods, intact and unspoiled. 
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we 

could be like that in our lives, 
passing through this world but 
making our main concern the 

end of it all, God and Heaven 
and Salvation? All right then, 
by the same yardstick wouldn't 
we be pitifully foolish to let 
something along the road so dis-
tract us, take up our attention, 
fascinate us - something like 

money or sex or hate or ambi-
tion or any mere creature--so 
that before we know it, our 
eyes have wandered off the 
road, and maybe at that very 
moment we go hurtling off the 
sharp wild curve of sudden 
death into the wrong eternity? 

Sometimes for a truck-driver, 
danger leaps up from the very 

opposite source. I mean he is 
looking at the road so long and 
so steadily that after a while he 
doesn't really see the road. They 
call it highway hypnosis. Here's 
a competent driver with a good 
night's sleep behind him on an 
open highway with a perfect 
view and no mechanical trouble, 
and he suddenly goes crashing 
off the road to disaster. The 
best explanation seems to be 
that the grey monotony of the 
road lulled him, hypnotized 
him, dJ;ugged him into a, kind of 
trance, and before he knew it, 
the wheel loosened in his grip-
just for a couple of moments-
and he went roaring to destruc-
tion. 

It's sad, but aren't there 
plenty of people like that spir-
itually? Year after year they 
stolidly, languidly follow the 

road of life, hardly realizing 
what it is all about. Day in, 
day out they drift along the 
same dull round of duties, auto-
matically, mechanically, almost 
in a daze. Their eyes are blank, 
their soul is numb, their heart 
is wooden, their spirit dried-up, 
dead. Theirs? This is a danger 



12 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

to any of us! From time to time 
we all have to stir ourselves, 
rouse ourselves, make ourselves 
sharply aware that we are on 
the road to eternity, that we 
carry a precious cargo (our 
very salvation), and that there 
are dangers all about us! Re-
mind ourselves that life is more 
than typing letters or driving 
nails or cooking meals or fill-
ing gas tanks! We are the chil-
dren of God, on the way home 
to Our Father who is in Heaven 
-and all these material things 
are but as steps on the stairs as 
we go up to Him! Life is a 
prosaic boring journey only to 
those that forget God is the 
goal! 

And, like the truck-drivers, 
we had better take no chances 
along the way. It may surprise 
you to know that the most cau-
tious of all drivers (except per-
haps the men who pilot the 
school-bus) are the broad-
shouldered boys behind the big 
steering-wheel of a truck. 
Haven't you ever noticed, for 
example, how on a dark after-
noon or a foggy morning a truck 
will drone along all lit up like 

a theatre marquee? They take 
no chances. Haven't you often 
heard how a truck-driver who 
feels himself growing drowsy 
will immediately pull over to 
the side of the road for a few 
minutes of exercise or even 
sleep? They take no chances. 
If it is a question of a risky 
road, or a longer road, they un': 

hesitatingly swing off on the 

longer. They take no chances. 
Certain roads they have to keep 
off altogether: "Trucks Not 
Allowed." And it might be well 
for us if mentally we pictured 
certain books or plays or places 
as marked with the warning 
sign. "Decent People Not 
Allowed." The trucks are for-
bidden because with their ton-
nage they would ruin certain 
thoroughfares. We ought to 
keep off the dirt roads of litera-
ture and entertainment because 
they can ruin us-or at least 
spatter us with mire, or in some 
moral mud-hole bog us down. 

I have . heard from salesmen 
who drive long hours to cover 
their broad territories that 
truck-drivers are not only the 

most careful drivers on the road, 
but also · the most courteous and 
considerate. Many a motorist 
broken down in the middle of 
nowhere with nothing but bleak 
miles of highway stretching 
away on either side, has found 
in the truck-driver a huge 
grimey angel who somehow got 
him started again. When you 
are lost, a truck driver really 

seems willing to show you the 

way. When bright beams meet 

on a midnight road, the truck 

(which could play the roll of 

bully) as a rule is the first to 

click the switch and dim the 

lights. And, if there is any 

danger ahead or any trouble 

(even if the trouble is a state 

trooper!) the truck will always 

blink you a warning. 



IDGHWAY TO HEAVEN 13 

Isn't it all a heart-warming, 
practical, modern example of 
kindness to our neighbor as we 
move along the road of life, and 
meet opportunities every day? 
Doesn't it accent the fact that 
in this breathless age we have 
plenty of intellectual brilliance 
and industrial genius and ex-
ecutive skill-only the men 
tend to become like their own 
machines, polished, efficient, 
impersonal as steel, without 
heart or soul. We have too 
many clever people; what we 
need are kind people, good peo-
ple. And the truck driver is the 

modern Good Samaritan of the 
road! 

So we close as we began. We 
turn from the trucks to the 
camels, with the thought that 
times have changed. The Three 
Wise Men who rode them were 
drawn to Christ by the splen-
dor of a Star, like converts at-
tracted by the sparkling genius 
of some priest, but nowadays 
most converts are first drawn to 
religion by the simple kindness 
of some human heart on fire 
with the love of God and ra-
diating that warmth among 
men. God bless you! 



THE 'LOCK IN WEDLOCK 

Address Delivered on January 17, 1954 

In tiny mission chapel and 
towering metropolitan cathe-
dral this Sunday morning, Cath-
olic priests have been reading 
the Gospel where our Lord goes 
to a wedding. I don't remember 
reading that He ever went to 
a divorce. In fact some of His 
statements, like "two in one 
flesh" and "let no man put asun-
der" give you the impression 
that in wedlock He put the 
accent strongly on the lock. 
Late confirmation of the wis-
dom of this comes from the 
most unexpected of sources, 
Maybe you too have read how 
Russia has done a neat, click-
ing, right-about-face in this 
matter of easy divorces. And 
maybe you remember when in 
Russia all you needed for a di-
vorce was a wife and a post-
card. Now in the Soviet Union 
it is as hard to get a divorce as 
it is to get a deep-freeze. Be-
cause it has slowly dawned on 
the dull bureaucratic mind that 
a nation is made up of families 
the way a wall is made up of 
bricks, and if the bricks begin 
to break up, your wall is about 
as solid and cohesive as a jig-
saw puzzle. 

Yet while godless and back-
ward Russia begins to tighten 
the bolts on shaky marriages, 
some bright strong American 

minds continue to think it lib-
eral and progressive to give 
away easy divorces like Super-
man badges, so that America 
can become the undisputed 
champion in the league of the 
broken home. I use the general 
term broken home because you . 
have to remember that for 
every official divorce there is 
probably an equal number of 
s epa rat ion s and desertions. 
These cases do not go down in 
the books as divorce cases, but 
they cut just as deeply into hu-
man hearts as tragedies. Un-
happiness doesn't have to be 
official. The worst of it is that 
the weather report for tomor-
row's marriages is stormier 
than today's. At least the joy-
less experts who make a study 
of statistics, and then shinny 
out on a limb waving their pre-
dictions, are morbidly confident 
that in fifty years, one marriage 
out of every two will be popping 
out of the toaster a charred and 
ruined reject. 

By that time America will 
really be "the land of the free." 
But let the twenty-first century 
pick up its own pieces. Why is 
it that even now the bridal 
gown is so often changed for 
the divorce suit? According to 
the records it seems most bad 
marriages drift on the rocks 



THE LOCK IN WEDLOCK 15 

when they have just about 
cleared the harbor; that is, in 
the third, fourth, and fifth year. 
You might expect the cause to 
be anything from in-laws to sex, 
but if you listen to the young 
casualties themselves, they will 
tell you most often that they 
were disappointed with mar-
riage, disillusioned. Marriage 
was not the mirage that their 
flushed and feverish early love 
had painted so hopefully on the 
horizon. In those days they had 
wondered how they could ever 
have lived in those wasted days 
before they had known each 
other . . . before this wonder-
ful, splendid, utterly darling 
creature had suddenly given a 
new meaning to life, and made 
the world glorious and vibrant 
overnight, and existence itself 
a joy, and even pouring rain a 
pleasure if they were walking 
through it together, and a long 
wearisome trainride w 0 r t h 
every boring minute of it if the 
beloved was waiting at the 
other end. But almost before 
the pelted rice is out of the hair 
and the star-dust out of the 
eyes, each begins to see that the 
angel married, has some very 
peculiar angles. The cover girl 
is never the same glamorous 
creature in the rest of the book. 
There are plenty of dull chap-
ters, plenty of irritating foot-
notes, and plenty of unexpected 

pictures of kimono and curlers 

shuffling round a breakfast 

table. On the other hand, 

Prince Charming is never quite 

the courtly personage he was 
when he was courting. Quite 
possibly he leaves a trail of 
ashes, clothes and faults all over 
the house. So what? Isn't all 
this the history of practically . 
every marriage that ever walk-
ed down the magnificent aisle 
of organ music and orange blos-
soms out into the hard, cold, 
shocking world of reality? 

But in former days they must 
have had the maturity to face 
it. Maybe now it is Momism 
that doesn't let the American 
boy grow up on his own, hard-
ened, self-reliant, and prepared 
for set-backs. Maybe with the 
girl it is the foolish romances, 
as sweet and unsubstantial as 
cotton candy, in movies and 
magazines that makes the future 
bride imagine even a mop in 
technicolor. Does it take so 
much maturity to realize that 
marriage, like the year, has its 
own different seasons, and it 
cannot always be spring? But 
for those who have the common 
sense to see this, the wisdom to 
accept it, the courage to face it, 
the loyalty to see it through ... 
there are joys and rewards and 
compensations in every season 
of married life! Of course mar-
ried life presumes love. And 
love means simply that you 
think so much of the other per-
son that self is always second. 
In life together, once self swag-
gers into the picture, from 
either side, romance becomes 
rivalry and the soft voice learns 
to hiss. They often forget that 



16 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

before you can love anyone 
deeply, you have to know that 
person deeply. That is why a 
swift, whirlwind courtship of-
ten ends like a whirlwind . . . 
with the ruin of two lives and · 
the wreckage of a young home 
in its impetuous wake. If court-
ship were merely a physical 
affair, like kissing and petting, 
then almost any young man 
might marry any young girl, 

each convinced that this would 
be a good deal and a grand 
game. But the whole purpose 
of courtship is not to know the 
other party physically, but to 
know the other person men-
tally and temperamentally, to 
see if your individual traits of 
character your likes and dis-
likes will orchestrate together 
without too many jangling dis-
cords. The more prudent you 
are in keeping company before 
marriage the less chance you 
take of parting company after 
marriage. And if you do not 
spend about a year sizing up 
your beloved's faults and vir-
tues and moods and disposition, 
the cold figures of case histor-
ies imply you are not likely to 
spend many years united in 
marriage. 

How about finances and mar-
riage, or matrimony and the 
matter of money? They have 
made a study of that question 
too, and it seems that most 
authorities agree that the hus-
band's income has nothing to 
do with the happiness of the 
marriage. Whether the man of 

the house is a laborer or a law-
yer, whether he goes to work 
in overalls toting a dinner pail, 
or in a pin-striped business suit 
jauntily swinging a brief case, 
these circumstances are only 
like the picture frame, some-
times plain, sometimes gilded, 
and have nothing to do with the 
inner picture, the marriage it-
self. I like that finding; it 
scores heavily for real love. In 
fact the only exception is that: 
when times are more prosper-
ous, divorces are more numer-
ous. I guess hard knocks tend to 
hammer people together, while 
the soft breeze of luxury is apt 
to blow them apart. 

But if insurance could be 
taken out against the break-up 
of a home, do you know which 
home would be the poorest risk 
and therefore would have to 
pay the highest premium? The 
home in which for some years 
the husband and wife each 
morning leave the house to-
gether for their respective busi-
nesses. Granted that there are 
exceptional cas e s, normally 
when the wife works she is in 
danger of undermining her 
marriage by three separate tun-
nels. First, the working wife 
comes flouncing home flourish-
ing her own pay-check, always 
a silent threatening weapon of 
independence, whereas if she 
would do her work for him at 
home, and he at his job for her, 
they would grow like two 
branches on one bough, bound 

by interdependence. Secondly, 



THE LOCK IN WEDLOCK 17 

if all day long she mingle with 
other men in the business 
world, she may glide into dan-
gerous friendships, especially if 
the sea is running a little rough 
in her own domestic world. And 
thirdly, she will be channelling 
the major portion of her time 
and energy outside, so that only 
a slender trickle will dribble 
into the home. Can anyone 
doubt that such a home is sure 
to suffer ... in its care, its im-
portance, its very spirit? 

Naturally-or unnaturally!-
if there are no children, there 
may not be much home to take 
care of. For that reason a min-
iature empty cradle ought to be 
the class-pin of the divorced, 
because the chances are ten to 
one that if the married couple 
multiply (that is, beget off-
spring) they will not divide 
(that is get a divorce.) Curious 
thing about children: they may 
tear a house apart, but some-
how they keep together a 

home. 
May I say here in a sympa-

thetic parenthesis that in those 
marriages where God in His 
wisdom withholds the gift of 
children, He generally compen-
sates by giving husband and 
wife an even greater mutual 
love. And such a wife in many 
ways is God's gift to a parish, 
because without her (who can 
give to parish projects her leis-

ure and her enthusiasm,) 
where would many of our par-
ish activities be? 

Some divorcees ought to wear 

as their class-pin the yellow 
triangle. Yellow because of be-
ing a traitor to their marriage 
vows; triangle because the tri-
angle (for example the hus-
band, the wife, the other wo-· 
man) is the arch-enemy of the 
family circle. Is it any wonder 
that one survey claimed that the 
real cause for most divorces 
during the war years and im-
mediately after was adultery? 
But then you cannot argue with 
lust; you cannot even plead with 
it. All you can do is pity it and 
pray for it. 

At the moment, the most 
monumental mockery · in the 
English language are those five 
monosyllables, "Till Death do us 
part." By the way I saw Death 
a couple of weeks ago. He wore 
a double-breasted grey suit, 
clipped grey mustache, thinning 
grey hair, and eye-glasses. He 
was getting into a cab and he 
had just thrown away a cigar. 
I have the solemn word of at 
least a hundred people that he 
was Death, because they had 
vowed to be husband and wife 
"till Death do us part." Well, 
he parted them-in a court-
room. He must be Death. 

He, this judge-;--is this Death? 

Not as God meant it, in raising 
marriage to the dignity of a 
Sacrament. Not as Nature 
meant it, because the baby 
looking up so helplessly from 
its crib, the boy at school, the 
youth in adolescence, yes and 
the wife who walked down her 



18 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

wedding aisle longing to be 
loved forever-even after she 
had given her youth and beauty 
to the bearing and raising of 

these children-she as well as 
they needs someone to cherish 
her and leave her never! 

In any marriage there will be 
flaws and faults, on both sides. 
And if love is blind,-it should 
not have the cataracts removed 
right after the wedding. It must 

learn to overlook and to under-
stand; to readjust and to com-
promise; to realize that the 
marriage ceremony is a con-
tract: from then on the job be-

gins, and like any job, entails 
hard work, changes, disappoint-
ment, courage. Above all, it is 
a contract for life, because if ' 
either party keeps open a back 
door of escape, divorce, then 
when things get rugged, the 
temptation will be to slip 
through that exit, give up the 
job, and skip off. Nail that door 
of divorce shut! This is the post 
you have sworn to hold till 
death, and if you pray, Our Lord 
Himself, even if it takes another 
miracle as at the marriage of 
Cana, will turn your tears into 
the wine of joy. God bless you, 



JANUARY INVENTORY 

Address delivered on January 24, 1954 

Spiritually our time has been 
called the Age of Novenas. 
Every priest wishes to Heaven 
it were known as the Age of the 
Mass. Between a Novena ser-
vice and the Sacrifice of the 
Mass there is no more compari-
son than between a devotional 
vigil light flickering away at a 
shrine, and the great crimson 
sanctuary lamp blazing forth 
the Presence of God at the Main 
Altar. But people like Novenas, 
partly I think because they par-
ticipate more actively in the 
service, and partly because they 
are praying for some particular 
personal intention. This is not 
bad; it is merely the lesser of 
two goods. So we encourage 
people to make Novenas, (and 
there will be more of them dur-
ing this Marian Year) but we 
should also remind them that a 
novena is not just spiritual con-
fectionery or a spiritual order-
blank or a spiritual toy like a 
kind of pious yo-yo. And since 
this is January, the month of in-
ventory, what could be a better 
time for taking stock on our No-
vena (whichever one it may be) 
and us? 

.... 
Say to yourself: "See here, 

I've been making this 'Perpe-
tual' Novena for some time 
now. What has it done for me?" 
I don't mean what has it done 
for that arthritis which we 

hoped to get rid of, nor for that 
apartment which we hoped to 
get hold of; nor that annoying 
neighbor we wanted God to in-
spire to move, nor for that dia-
mond ring we wanted God to 
inspire a certain somebody to 
give us . . . but what has the 
Novena done for me myself, my 
character, my life, my soul? 

I have been preaching at a 
weekly Novena for the last 
fifteen years, and I have en-
countered some weird requests 
even to the blessing of sweep-
stake tickets with the sugared 
inducement that in event of a 
win I should get half. I remem-
ber during the war one woman 
told me she was making that 
Novena to get butter. All right, 
but the first purpose of every 
Novena should be to glorify 
God and to make ourselves bet-
ter-I mean to become better in 
thought and word and deed in 
the eye of God. Otherwise our 
Novena is in danger of drop-
ping to a mere game of Gimme, 
or becoming a spiritual charm 
bracelet, or a religious cosmetic 
-a kind of powder and paint 

deftly applied to the soul. 
Maybe that powder and paint 

idea is not too bad; with this ob-
servation: that while the illus-
tration is lifted out of the life 
of the ladies, the application fits 
just as snugly into the lives of 



20 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

men. Suppose then, it is Monday 
or Tuesday or Wednesday eve-
ning, and N oreen Novena is 
prettying up before hurrying off 
to church. In her left hand she 
holds a compact, like an artist's 
palette, and begins a little ex-
terior decorating. This of course 
is perfectly all right, though 
sometimes I think the Novena 
preacher, booming the attend-
ance, is misunderstood when he 
asks his congregation to bring 
a new face to the services. Any-
way Noreen here goes on mak-
ing minor repairs or even ex-
tensive alterations at the point 
where God left off, and as she 
smiles into the compact's little 
mirror, she suddenly becomes 
confidential with it. "You know, 
little mirror, I was just think-
ing. Here I've been taking you 
to the Novena in my handbag 
for the past two years. And you 
know something? I haven't 
changed a bit!" "Right!" retorts 
the mirror. All mirrors reflect; 
this one does its reflecting out 
loud. "You haven't changed. 
The same old faults, worn into 
your soul like stale powder in-
to that puff. The same old toy-
ing with dangerous occasions of 
sin. And don't try to tell me 
otherwise. Sure, you brought 
me to church every Monday, but 
you brought me other places too 
-where you were not quite so 
archangelic. Now do you re-
member when .. . " 

"Humph!" She tosses her 
shoulders indignantly and 
swishes her hair as though 
shaking off some insect buzzing 

around her. Is she hearing 
things? Anyway, she goes on to 
crayon her lips into a dainty 
cupid's bow in a shade that was 
probably advertised as "Sunset 
in the Sierras" but which some-
times turns out like Firebox on 
the Corner. But not this time. 
"Well," murmurs the mirror, 
"not so bad! Some of your faces 
should be in Museums. You are 
very skilled at making-up. But 
why is it you never think of 
making-up with those people 
with whom you have quar-
relIed? You don't go in for that 
kind of making-up do you? No, 
but you go to your Novena 
every Monday and with your 
pretty painted lips shout Y9ur 
prayers, but it would take a 
chisel to pry open those lips to 
say a Christian word to so and 
so, or so and so. When you pa,ss 
them it is war-paint you are 
wearing, and your nose sudden-
ly tilts up like an anti-aircraft 
gun. Oh, you are in the right 
and they are in the wrong! But, 
is Christianity a law court? You 
are not supposed to greet them 
for their sake because they are 
right and so it is only just; nor 
for your sake because you are 
right, but you feel generous; but 
for God's sake, no matter who is 
right or who is wrong, because 
He wants it!" 

Miss Noreen Novena doesn't 
like this rebuke one bit, and 
bang! she slaps the powder-puff 
so hard against her nose that a 
little white cloud of powderdust 
drifts off like smoke from a 
cannon. "Ah ... there's another 



JANUARY INVENTORY 21 

thing I've been noticing lately" 
says the mirror. "That atom-
bomb temper. In church aren't 
you the sweet one, so gentle and 
so devout! At the Novena, Nor-
een is a little lamb. But at home, 
Noreen can be a pretty little 
panther, snarling, snapping, 
surly, selfish ... " 

But before the mirror could 
finish, Noreen clicked the com-
pact shut, and went clicking off 
on her high heels (and probably 
her high horse) to the Novena. 
The stained-glass win dow s 
wouldn't be so gabby. 

Honestly, though, isn't there 
something in what the mirror 
said? What is the difference be-
tween standing before a little 
mirror and putting on your 
cheek a dab of rouge and a pat 
of powder, and kneeling before 
a little shrine and just putting 
on your soul a little patch of 
prayer and a little snatch of 
hymn-if that is all the Novena 
means! In both cases isn't it all 
on the surface, only superficial? 
Don't they both effect a mere 
temporary change, a passing 
glow? Isn't it true that neither 
of them gets inside to produce 
a permanent improvement? 

No Novena or Sodality or De-
votion is meant to be a mere 
spiritual bon-bon, wrapped in 
attractive tin-foil. Rather that 
weekly half-hour should be 
more like a tiny cake of yeast 
dropped in among all the other 
hours of the week and raising 
them to a higher level. But it 
never will, unless we go to the 
Novena not just praying for the 

goods of this world, but also to 
be good in this world. 

Several years ago a Pastor 
told me that a lady-lecturer in 
his parish hall had said among 
other things that some people 
were like Christmas trees and · 
some were like apple trees. Who 
she was, how she developed it I 
don't know, but I do think that 
this divides the people who go to 
a Novena sharply and vividly. 
Take a · Christmas tree for ex-
ample. It goes big for glamor; it 
is all razzle-dazzle; it loves to 
stand there with its gaudy orna-
ments and necklace of colored 
bulbs, the center of attraction. 
It doesn't do anything. It just 
stands there. It doesn't give 
anything; it just gets. It expects 
you to lay presents at its feet. 
It isn't a strong tree; a little 
push and over it goes; it has no 
roots. And is it not true; in a 
few days the needles start turn-
ing brown and falling off, and 
the tree is flung out as a fire-
hazard. 

Now the apple tree is differ-
ent. No show-off, no splurge of 
artificial razzle-dazzle. It stands 
there quietly, naturally; and it 
is always giving: in the spring, 
frail white blossoms like 
orchard snows for poet or paint-
er; in the summer cool shelter-
ing shade for the wayfarer; in 
the fall luscious mellow fruits. 
It is a strong tree. When a storm 
comes, it may bend and shudder 
and groan-but its roots are 
firm and it does not fail. And al-
ways it is growing! 

So at every church service 



22 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

there are Christmas tree people, 
and apple tree people. The 
Christmas tree crowd are all 
a-flutter over the externals, the 
color, the lights, the music, the 
incense-God help us even the 
sermon. Like the Christmas 
Tree they expect some favor to 
be laid at their feet. Like the 
Christmas Tree, they are not 
strong; the first push of tempta-
tion and down they go. They are 
not true-; as soon as the Novena 
service is out, their piety fades 
and falls away like the needles, 
and they are in the world and 
of the world and ready for the 
ways of the world. 

The apple tree people are dif-
ferent. They don't bother too 
much with the externals of the 
Novena. It doesn't particularly 
matter to them which priest 
gives the sermon, because they 
are not devoted to any particu-
lar "Father" but to the Mother 
of God. When temptation stirs 
them, they may for a moment 
waver, but their resolution grips 

the ground like deep roots, and 
they don't go down. And above 
all, they go on bearing virtuous 
fruit-more frequent confes-
sions, more fervent Commun-
ions, more little daily Visits to 
Our Blessed Lord. And above 
all, more frequent and more in-
telligent assistance at the Holy 
Sacrifice of the Mass. 

Anyway, what better time 
than the beginning of the year 
to take an inventory of our 
church-going? Especially when 
we lift our eyes to that other 
tree, the gaunt tree of the cross, 
lifting its dark" stark branches 
against the somber Good Friday 
sky, and dripping slow splashes 
of Blood like the last red leaves 
of autumn. Shorn of the foliage 
of all smaller matters, the cross 
stands there as simple and 
straight as a sign-post. And it 
says: "Seek ye first the King-
dom of Heaven, and all these 
things shall be added unto 
you!" 

God bless you! 



QUEEN OF THE COMMONPLACE 

Address Delivered on January 31, 1954 

The preacher in the pulpit 
practically has a captive audi-
ence. True, they can get up and 
walk out but; they generally 
don't. But the man behind a 
microphone can be flipped far 
into outer space by the mere 
flick of a dial. So in hopes of 
soothing itching fingers, all the 
speaking experts implore the 
radio preacher to begin with an ' 
arresting, ear - catching sen-
tence. It always reminds me of 
the high school boy who had 
the same idea and so began his 
composition. "'Hades'!" (only 
he spelled Hades differently) 
"'Hades!' growled the Duchess, 
as she lit another cigar." 

I'm afraid all I can say by 
way of introduction is that I've 
been looking at this week's cal-
endar, and noticing that Tues-
day is the Feast of Our Lady's 
Purification, and wondering if 
you sometimes get the same 
thoughts about all these feasts 
of Our Lady as I do. Well, it's 
an easy error and it needs con-
tinual correction. I mean, don't 
you sometimes think to your-
self, "Mary has so many feasts!" 
(That is true; they just about 
sprinkle the calendar like hol-
ly-berries.) "So, Mary must 
have led a crowded, colorful, 
thrilling life!" (That is wrong.) 

Certainly her feasts move 
along the avenue of the church-

year like a bright procession of 
gorgeous floats-the Annuncia.., 
tion, the Visitation, the Presen-
tation, the Immaculate Concep-
tion, the Assumption, and all 
the rest. But notice this. The 
last two feasts I mentioned, the 
Immaculate Conception in De-
cember and the Assumption in 
August, on . the calendar have 
not six months between them. 
But in the life of Our Lady they 
were separated by more than 
sixty years! A crowded, color-
ful life? It is we who do the 
crowding-crowding the events 
of a long lifetime into twelve 
short months. A colorful life? 
On the calendar Mary's life 
may seem a gay parade of fes-
tivals, but in her kitchen as she 
lived it, it was just a run of 
r 0 uti n e days, monotonous 
months, ' commonplace years. 

And why not? In all things 
save sin, was not Mary one of 
ourselves? The soft airs of 
spring were gentle upon her 
face. Winter winds chilled her. 
The summer sun bronzed her 
brow. Wasn't her home like 
any of the other little stone 
houses in the village, a spinning 
wheel by the hearth, brown-
crusted bread in the oven, a 
jaunty plume of blue smoke 
curling from the chimney? It 
was between the fireplace and 
the well, between the loom and 



24 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

the broom that Mary passed her 
humdrum, uneventful hours -
her life! 

If you wanted a colorful, dra-
matic patron among the woman 
saints, you would be well ad-
vised to skip this house-wife of 
Nazareth. I would tell you to 
take St. Joan of Arc, really a 
glamorous figure in her silver 
armor, on her stately white 
charger, under the silken ban-
ner of France, leading an army 
into battle! Or take St. Cather-
ine of Sienna, the counsellor of 
Popes and Kings, actually go-
ing back and forth across Eu-
rope making peace between en-
emy camps! Or take St. Eliz-
abeth of Hungary, a glittering 
queen living her life of hidden 
sainthood amid the rustle of 
brocades and the flash of jew-
els. Yes, take them all - but 
never forget that the highest 
saint in heaven is still a simple 
mother, a quiet home-body 
whose whole world was bound-
ed by walls and windows. 

But is not this the very rea-
son why she should be our pa-
troness? In the indifferent 
glance of the world are we too 
not just ordinary people? Our 
names do not stream in black 
banners a c r 0 s s newspaper 
headlines. Our deeds do not 
spurt out in blue flashes from 
a telegraph key, news of the 
moment! Our successes do not 
gleam in white bulbs over 
theatre lobbies. No, we are or-
dinary people leading ordinary 
lives. Tuesday is just a dUll 
echo of Monday; and Thursday 

is a faint carbon-copy of Wed-
nesday. We walk in the unex-
citing footprints 'of our yester-
days. 

So, like Mary we live a 
commonplace life. But why 
then can't we take the one ad-
ditional step and like Mary live 
that commonplace life for God? 
Don't you see that every time 
Mary tossed a stick of wood 
into the crackling red fireplace, 
she could say to herself, "I am 
warming this room for God!" 
Every time she laid the earth-
enware plates on the supper 
table, she could think, "I'm set-
ting this table for God!" And a 
glance out the window showed 
her Jesus and Joseph trudging 
up the road from the carpenter 
shop ready to sit down to a 
workingman's meal. An ordin-
ary, commonplace life? Abso-
lutely. But an ordinary, com-
monplace life lived for God! 

Can we do that? Can we 
glorify our monotony, dedicate 
our routine? The answer should 
be as simple as the five fingers 
on our hand, five words that 
consecrate a day to God: "All 
for Thee, my God!" Say this 
after your morning prayers, and 
it means that everything you 
do that day you are offering 
to God as a prayer. And whe-
ther you are an operator at a 
switchboard, or a teacher at a 
blackboard, or a housewife at 
an ironing-board; whether you 
run a typewriter or run a truck; 
whether you fill teeth or fill 
gas tanks-the good God will 
accept it as a prayer. He knows 



QUEEN OF THE COMMONPLACE 25 

that we cannot be always pray-
ing-but isn't it a tragedy to 
let all the rest of the time go 
wasted as regards gaining merit 
for Heaven? 

How many hours do you give 
to God in a week? I mean di-
rectly, specifically to God. 
Count your Sunday Mass, 
morning and evening prayers, 
rosaries, and you do better than 
average if you give Him three 
hours. Three hours out of one 
hundred and sixty eight. The 
next week too, three hours for 
God and eternity, and one hun-
dred and sixty five useless for 
eternity. At the end of a life 
of seventy years what a pathet-
ic little pile of merit for Heav-
en, compared to the massive 
mountain of life lived, and 
work done, but useless for eter-
nity! 

But say that little prayer 
each morning, and mean it, and 
it will in a way turn a cooking 
range or a carpenter's lathe in-
to an altar. Repeat it during 
the day. Don't go round, of 
course, mumbling "All for 
Thee, my God! All for Thee, 
my God.!" like a broken record. 
You may go - well, north-
north-west. But before the 
more important actions of the 
day, renew it; say it again. 

However we ought to point 
out that before such drab ac-
tions can be burnished into a 
prayer, there are two condi-
tions. But they are conditions 
and not catches. The first is 
that we must not be in the state 
of mortal sin. Naturally. From 

filthy fingers God does not ac-
cept offerings. The second con-
dition is that the work itself be 
not a sin. Otherwise you have 
the absurd situation of a man 
heaving a brick through a jew- . 
eler's window, scooping up 
bracelets and brooches and 
rings the while he piously mur-
murs, "All for Thee, my God!" 

No. Actions that are bad, au-
tomatically rule themselves out. 
Actions that are good, automat-
ically register themselves for 
our eternal reward. What I am 
pleading for is the vast major-
ity of actions that lie in be-
tween-the thousands of "neu-
tral" actions, all the way from 
baking a cake to filling out an 
income-tax report. Ah, what a 
super-natural good intention 
you would have to make there! 

Somewhere I have read that 
the most gorgeous sunset is the 
result of our central sun pour-
ing its golden beams on millions 
of tiny particles of common 
dust hanging in the atmos-
phere, giving us the purples· 
and pinks, the orange and scar-
let that turn the western sky 
into an autumn hillside of col-
or. Just so, one central golden 
good intention shining upon all 
the thousands of tiny, grimy, 
insignificant, workaday items 
in our ordinary day transforms 
them into a spectacle of splen-
dor in the eyes of God. 

If I may illustrate-with a 
modern parable. Once upon 
twenty years ago, there lived 
in Dublin a humble workman 
And every morning on his way 



26 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

to work he would drop into his 
parish church and say a few 
prayers. On his way out he 
would stop for a moment be-
fore a marble statue in the back 
of the church. It was a statue 
of Christ the Worker, sitting _ 
down after a hard day's work, 
His shoulders stooped, His 
weary hands crossed on His lap. 
The man in the Dublin overalls 
would put his hands into the 
Hands of Christ, say just a few 
words, pick up his lunch-box 
and go hurrying out. 

Day after day, like that, and' 
year after year. And one day, 
just before he was due to 
retire from his job, the 
old worker collapsed at his 
bench in the foundry. They 
brought him to the hospital, 
gave him the Last Rites, and 
had just finished the prayers 
for the dying, when the grey 
haired old fellow looked at the 
flickering candle and smiled. 
"So this is the day," he whis-
pered, "the day when all the 
lights go out. Because for me 
they will all go out-the bright 
lights in the stores and theatres, 
the blue lights in the foundry, 
the soft lights of home. And 
into the dark I can carry only 
this one light, this blessed 

candle, the light of faith. When 
I think how long I lived under 
those other lights, and how 
hard I worked, and how the 
grave is only a few feet wide, 
but you can't bring anything 
across, You can't take it with 
you .. ." 

And then he spoke faster so 
that the candle-flame danced. 
"I don't care. Every day for 
thirty years I have put my 
work into His Hands, and offer-
ed it to Him as a prayer .. You 
can't take it with you? I have 
sent it on ahead! And it will 
be waiting for me, in the vaults 
of heaven." 

Somebody put the candle in-
to his pale fingers. And he 
seemed like a traveller in the 
olden days who had come to 
the end of his journey, and now 
at the inn took his candle and 
was going upstairs, up to his 
well-deserved rest, eternal rest. 
And that's the way the Foun-
dryman of Dublin went to meet 
the Carpenter of Nazareth. 

In this little talk I have spo-
ken to you perhaps two thou-
sand words. Forget them all, 
but never forget five of them. 
Use them every day of . your 
life - "All for Thee, My God!" 

God bless you! 



NO STRANGE GODS 

Address Delivered on February 7, 1954 

One night thirteen men sat 
down to supper. The next day 
two of them, Jesus and Judas 
were dead. This was the origin 
of the absurd superstition about 
number thirteen. Because of a 
mere coincidence, that poor 
number has limped through his-
tory like a leper, ringing its 
outcast bell and hoarsely warn-
ing everyone to keep away 
from it. You may have read of 
the hotel in the mid-west where 
if you discover to your conster-
nation that there are thirteen 
people in your dinner party, 
the management will graciously 
provide you with a dummy fig-
ure attired in faultless evening 
dress. Naturally his name is 
Louis the Fourteenth. I suppose 
that if some item on your bill 
should amount to thirteen dol-
lars, the hotel would b e willing 
even to change it to a felicitous 
fourteen. 

A couple of years ago I was a 
minor casualty in a major 
Catholic Hospital, and during 
that delightful period of con-
valescence when I was once 
m ore vertical and could prowl 
the . corridors, I noticed there 

was not one sick room marked 
thirteen. On one floor they ran 
210, 211 , 212, 214. On the next, 
311, 312, 314- and so on. Here, 
you must admit, is another very 
wise reason for forbidding chil-

dren. to visit in a hospital. The 
school teaches them to count 
211, 212, 213, 214. But in hos-
pital-mathematics, t h i r tee n 
suddenly submerges like a sub-
marine. The child might wonder 
if in the hospital, arithmetic it-
self wasn't a little sick. 

Of course the nuns in charge 
shake discouraged bonnets and 
protest, "It is not our fault. It 
is the patients. The pressure 
comes from them." Apparently 
when a patient is being wheeled 
into a room, one thing he dis-
likes is looking up and seeing 
a number-plate on the door 
blink down on him with the 
ominous, sinister, never-to-be-
mentioned thirteen. For the 
same reason (if you can call it 
reason) there are tall buildings, 
twenty stories high, that still do 
not have a thirteenth floor. And 
it is gradually dawning on me 
why on the popular overnight 
boats that used to ply between 
Boston and New York, I never 
had any difficulty getting a 
room, no matter how late I ap-
plied. I used to get number 
thirteen-used to ask for it. It 
was quiet, comfortable, cheap-
and always available! 

Thirteen! But the Thirteen 
Colonies did rather nicely 
don't you think? 

However thirteen is only the 
grand marshal in this parade 



28 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

of fantastic freaks called super-
stition. "Never walk under a 
ladder!"-well, not if there is 
danger of a bucket of white 
lead plopping on your head. 
"Break a mirror and you will 
have seven years hard luck!" 
Break a mirror and you break 
your back picking up the 
pieces, that's all. "Don't let a 
black cat cross your path!" No 
-and if one should, just whirl 
around and hurry right home! 
"Carry a rabbit's foot for good 
luck." But it wasn't such good 
luck for the rabbit-who once 
owned / four of them-was it? 
"Don't light three on a match!" 
I wonder what brilliant young 
match-company ex e cut i v e 
dreamed up that one to step 
up sales. 

Of course we, in our superior 
fashion, smile at these silly 
practises. Or do we? Perhaps if 
they bob up on the sea of con-
versation, we take pot-shots at 
them as mockingly as anyone 
else. They are perfectly ridicu-
lous, they are echoes from the 
jungle, they are shadows from 
the dark ages, they are as 
phony as witch-doctors and as 
pathetic as a charm bracelet 
rattling with human teeth. 

So in conversation, in theory 
-we scorn them. But how 
about when it comes to acting 
ourselves? I remember I could 
always get room thirteen on the 
boat. I remember the hard-boil-
ed hospital superintendent who 
said with a kind of twisted 
smile, "People are funny, Fa-
ther. But they never will ad-

mit it." Is that the way it is-
we pooh-pooh all sUperstition 
in public, but when it comes to 
our own private life, we secret-
ly shelter a lurking fear that 
there may be something in it 
. . . after all we might as well 
play safe--there's nothing to 
lose and you never can tell-in 
other words, plain words, when 
we are alone and superstition 
shakes its Halloween mask, we 
play the coward. 

In such an offence, it is true 
that Conscience in its role of 
District Attorney would not at-
tempt to indict you for serious 
sin. But it is just as true that 
you are dethroning your God-
given mature common sense 
and for the moment placing 
on the dunce-stool of your 
mind a childish folly unworthy 
of a thinking man. And sin is 
not completely out of the pic-
ture, either. As a matter of fact 
superstition is wrong, precisely 
because it pushes God out of 
the picture and presumes to 
take His place. For doesn't its 
frightening voice whisper that 
this four-leaf 'green clover, this 
scared and scurrying black cat, 
this amputated white rabbit's 
foot, this shattered mirror-
will actually influence your fu-
ture? By some mysterious pow-
er within it, it will brighten or 
darken events to come, for good 
or for ill. But the only Hand 
that throws the switch of the 
future is God. Only the one 
All- knowing and A I mig h t Y 
God; nobody or nothing else. 
Because if anything else could, 



NO STRANGE GODS 29 

it would be independent of God, 
above God, greater than God. 
It would be God. We talk so 
freely and so glibly of our luck, 
of good luck and of bad luck. 
There is no luck. Whatever 
happens, happens only because 
God wants it to happen or be-
cause God (having given free 
will) at least permits it to hap-
pen. And no insignificant crea-
ture can trip the straight and 
lordly strides of the Creator. 

So the sin of superstition is 
that it gives to some ridiculous 
object the power that belongs 
only to God. "I am the Lord 
Thy God. Thou shalt not have 
strange gods before Me!" 

In olden time s the J ews bow-
ed down before a golden calf. 
Nowadays millions of Americ-
ans press their foreheads to 
the dust before a similar idol: 
astrology, fortune telling, and 
the like. And if you do not 
think this is a golden idol, just 
reflect that the annual take is 
over one hundred million dol-
lars! So much does the great 
and gullible American public, 
whose godfather was Barnum, 
hand over each year to the mul-
titude of mysterious prophets 
for profit who learnedly read 
palms, cards, stars, crystal-
balls, tea-leaves,-almost any-
thing for anything from a half-
dollar up. To these practition-
ers it is an abstruse science; t o 
the ordinary envious by-stand-
er this is too modest; it also 
must be a fine art to separate 
so much money from so many 
people. And it seems to be 

growing. Along with the comics 
arid cross-word puzzle and the 
obituaries and the stock-mark-
et, many papers are running a 
regular column for those who 
pin their hopes on horoscopes. 

Tell your fortune! It seems 
just as logical to predict a man's 
future from the egg-stains on 
his vest as from the tea leaves 
in his cup. In both cases part 
of him goes to the cleaners 
anyway. And haven't you often 
wondered why these people 
who have a private knot-
hole into the future do not 
u se their top-secret and ad-
vance information to invest in 
a few good stocks on the mark-
et, or a few good steeds on the 
track, and so accumulate a for-
tune instead of telling it? 

It should be comforting to 
know that acts of superstition 
are practically always saved 
from being grave sins by the 
unflattering fact that we do not 
think. We · do not realize what 
we are doing. This is handy 
because some superstitions have 
their roots even in religion. 
Like that one of thirteen at the 
table or Friday the thirteenth. 
Or knocking wood. In medi-
eval Europe the peasant on his 
way to the fields might bow his 
head in prayer before some 
wayside cross. Then he would 
reverently touch the carved 
wooden figure and make the 
sign of the cross on himself. 
But suppose that day while in 
the fields some sudden danger 
threatened him, maybe a wild 
animal, maybe a crackling light-



30 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

ning storm. He was far from his 
roadside crucifix so he reached 
out and touched the nearest ob-
ject of wood, crossed himself, 
and said his prayer again. 
Now, centuries later and with-
out knowing why, his descend-
ants are solemnly knocking on 
wood to fend off disaster. They 
might just as well scratch their 
heads; in fact it might amount 
to the same thing. 

Then there is the chain pray-
er. Not long ago I found one in 
the last pew of our church, a 
greasy typewritten page con-
taining some sort of prayer and 
the dire warning that you must 
say this prayer eleven times 
for eleven days before eleven 
a. m., otherwise eleven terrible 
misfortunes would befall you-
topple on your helpless head, I 
suppose, like eleven cocoanuts 
out of a tree. Give a moron a 
typewriter and he will compose 
a chain prayer. People who cir-
culate chain prayers almost de-
serve to be sentenced to chain 

'. gangs. By deliberately breaking 
a chain prayer and becoming 
a missing link, you prove that 
you are not a duplicating 
monkey but an independent 
man. 

Then St. Alphonsus tells us 
of bandits he encountered who 
would light their votive lamps 
at a Shrine of Our Lady and 
pray devoutly that she would 
send rich travellers into their 
hands. We would never do that. 

But some of us can be as in-
consistent. There are nominal 
Catholics who devoutly wear 
Our Lady's scapular medal 
over a heart scabby with sins, 
brazenly pretending that as 
long as they hold on to the 
medal, they can also hold on 
to the sins, and somehow Our 
Lady will sneak them in 
through the service entrance of 
Heaven. Aren't they afraid they 
may end up in the incinerator? 

And what about those Catho-
lics who put the Sacramentals 
above the Sacraments, who 
would never dream of going 
without a smudge of Ashes on 
Ash Wednesday, or a sprig of 
Palm on Palm Sunday, or a 
blessing of the throat on St. 
Blaise's Day, or a St. Christo-
pher Medal in their car, and at 
the same time go on missing 
Mass, missing Easter Duty -
this is religion? This is a super-
stition clumsily wearing the 
mask of religion! 

Religion is like a mountain 
whose head is crowned with 
snow but whose heart burns 
with volcanic fires. There must 
be reason in the head of man 
before there can be true ardor 
and fervor in his heart. Super-
stition is unworthy of man and 
insulting to God. Serve God be-
cause He is great. Serve Him 
joyfully because He is good. 
Serve Him only · because He 
alone is God! 

God bless you! 



A PERPLEXED PATRON 

Address Delivered on February 14, 1954 

Maybe your experience is 
different, but I have never seen 
a statue raised to this particular 
saint, nor even a tiny medal 
struck in his honor. To this day 
down the highway of history he 
comes with the cloak of mys-
tery held high before his face. 
He is so obscure a saint that on 
the calendar of the Church he 
rates the very simplest rank of 
feast that she can give. His 
background is so vague that 
about the only things we know 
about him are that he lived in 
the third century, died in a pool 
of blood, a martyr, and was 
buried outside Rome. The mys-
tery is that in our own twen-
tieth century when the memory 
of. far more prominent saints 
has withered brown with the 
passing years, the memory of 
this undistinguished man keeps 
strangely green. But I doubt he 
would be flattered if he knew 
why-or how. 

If you, by a clap of your 
hands, could resurrect him this 
very day (because the four-
teenth of February is his feast-
day) and transport him by stra-
toliner across the sea to any 
city in America, you would 
have on your hands a very be-
wildered saint. As he trails his 
long white Roman robe past the 
candy-store windows with their 
large red hearts of shining 
pasteboard, and the drug-store 
windows with their little red 

greeting cards edged with pa-
per-lace, and the flaring red 
signs everywhere: "Don't For- . 
get St. Valentine's Day!" "Won't 
You Be My Valentine?"-your 
poor. perplexed saint, the orig-
inal Valentine, might shake his 
holy head and wonder if they 
had not confused Valentine 
with Valentino. 

You understand there is 
nothing wrong with mailing 
Valentine cards or giving Val-

. entine candy. What is wrong is 
that they should be called Val-
entine cards or candy in the 
first place. You can slog up 
and down the dreary columns 
of encyclopediae and you come 
away with not one simple, solid 
reason why St. Valentine 
should be associated with ro-
mance at all. Oh, some allege 
that in warmer climes it is 
around his feast-day that the 
birds begin to mate. This is 
about as logical as the case of 
poor St. Philip on a certain 
semi - tropical island. Here, 
many years ago, they had a 
tremendous hurricane on the 
feast of St. Philip. To this day 
they always refer to it as St. 
Philip's hurricane. He takes the 
rap. With even less reason St. 
Valentine has somehow become 
part of the legend of love, and 
takes his place with June and 
moon, balconies and serenades, 
covered bridges and diamond 
rings, as one of the standard 



32 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

props on the stage of the sigh-
ing heart. 

If it were a pure, continent 
Christian love, it would still be 
a mistake. But by and large the 
love they want St. Valentine 
to endorse, almost like a testi-
monial in a commercial, is love 
gone pagan. Better if they call-
ed it not St. Valentine's Day, 
but Cupid's Day and Cupid's 
candy and Cupid's greeting 
cards after the fleshy little god 
whose only principle is pleas-
ure. "Won't you be my Valen-
tine?" This should mean won't 
you be my fine noble Christian 
Saint? There are many who 
would think twice before they 
asked for that. "Won't you be 
my Christian martyr?" But a 
martyr is one who stands for 
conscience and right. Many 
would prefer someone who 
would not be quite so stubborn 
and stuffy about conscience in 
circumstances that call for a 
soft and passionate surrender. 

Look again at that heart-
shaped box of candy in the 
window. It is red, and red is 
traditionally the color of love. 
But this is not the true deep red 
of lasting loyalty. This is the 
bold flaming red of hot passion. 
The box too is shaped like a 
heart, and the heart is tradi-
tionally the emblem of love. 
But this is a hollow heart, 
crammed only with creams and 
caramels which, like the stolen 
sweets of lust, are soon con-
sumed and leave the heart 
empty indeed. It is no longer 
a "Sweetheart." The box too at 

first glance seems to be bound 
firmly (as true love should be) 
because there it is tied with a 
ribbon and a big bow. But look 
a moment, and it turns out that 
the big bow is only a fluffy orn-
ament on top and doesn't bind 
the box at all. In just the same 
way it is only a light fancy that 
joins pagan love together, and 
when that goes, they fall apart 
like an empty box of candy. 

If I were a Communist and 
wanted to ruin our country, I 
would advocate light and loose 
love on every side. Isn't that 
one more reason the Com-
munists have for hating the 
Catholic Church? We do not 
claim that the Catholic Church 
is the last sanctuary of pure 
womanhood, or high morals, 
but do you know of any other 
voice raised more strongly and 
more steadily in support of 
chaste courtship and permanent 
marriage? All decent people 
should be alarmed at the pa-
gan standards that youth is sop-
ping up on every side - from 
the trashy paper-back books in 
the corner drug-store to the 
learned lecture halls in some 
universities. Listen. The Pro-
fessor of Biology is pontificat-
ing: "You girls may wear a 
coat made from the fur of one 
animal, a hat made with the 
feathers of another, and shoes 
from the hide of a third. But 
don't forget: you yourself in-
side make the fourth animal. 
You are an animal, so why fight 
it?" I wonder if the Professor 
pauses to ponder that the dif-



A PERPLEXED PATRON 33 

ference between the man and 
the monkey is still the monkey-
wrench? The class files into an-
other room. And the Professor 
of Psychology is droning on: 
"Free will? Nonsense! Stimu-
li and reflexes, nerves and re-
sponses - you are only a bun-
dle of instincts. Free will is a 
high, flattering idea but it just 
doesn't stand up." (I wonder 
what would happen if you stole 
the professor's wallet on the 
way out and maintained you 
couldn't help it - you had to 
do it - a compulsion; after all 
you had no free will). But the 
bell rings, and in a little while 
the class settles itself before the 
Professor of Sociology: "Of 
course when you decide to 
choose a mate you will have to 
get a marriage license to com-
ply with the law, but as stu-
dents of human society you 
should know that marriage is 
an outworn tribal custom edg-
ing toward extinction. Soon it 
will go the way of the cave and 
the stone hatchet." 

Then some of these very 
teachers who may be old and 
cold and academic and theoret-
ic, thes€ professors profess to 
be shocked when the young 
people carry their liberal lec-
tures out of the classroom into 
life, into the park or the parked 
car. Well, what do you think 
is going to happen if you break 
up the old decencies like dry 
wood and toss them on the im-
petuous fires of flaming youth? 

Furthermore, this gospel of 
pagan love, where pleasure is 

enthroned and conscience is en-
tombed, this devil's gospel is 
preached from other pulpits 
than university desks. Is it too 
much to say that the "mod-
ern" attitude toward love stands 
somewhere between a wink and 
a whistle? Take the gospel of 
love according to St. Cinema, 
and recall how frequently in 
the movies marriage is a flip-
pant, frivolous affair played for 
laughs. Or, if they are young 
it is a sudden adolescent thrill; 
and if they are older it is a 
sophisticated interlude, with at 
least one of them wearing the 
degree -"D.G." meaning Divorce 
Granted, or possibly Damaged 
Goods ... but how often on the 
screen do you see marriage em-
phasized as a final, life-long 
contract, not to speak of a sac-
red Sacrament? 

Take the newspapers and 
love, and you know as well as 
I do that a chorus girl's scandal 
will be smeared over page one 
while the golden wedding of 
some sterling citizen is lucky if 
it gets ten lines near the obitu-
aries. Take love and contem-
porary fiction. They tell me 
that today's authors, these 
drug-store Dickens', t h ink 
nothing of sending the heroine 
off on a week-end with one arm 
around-the "hero" and the other 
snapping its fingers at stodgy, 
long-haired convention. Take 
love and Tin Pan Alley. Listen 
to some of these modern songs 
and you wonder if they didn't 
take both morals and music 
from the felines on the back-



34 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

yard fence . a long piercing 
wail of desire. Would you ever 
suspect from all this that love 
could be sweet and wholesome 
and possibly shy and certainly 
clean and good? 

Oh it is a soft, sticky, sicken-
ing goo that the world will slap 
on your mind if you go to it for 
standards of conduct! But in so 
delicate a field, in so sacred a 
human relationship, should we 
go for our standards to the 
films of Hollywood, or the 
scandals of the newspapers, or 
the divorce courts of Reno, or 
the beauty contests of Atlantic 
City, or the brassy songs of 
Broadway - or to the Com-
mandments of God and the 
glorious ideals of Christ? 

Certainly it is natural for a 
man to love a maid, but cer-
tainly it is not natural-not the 
nature of man-that his love be 
no higher than the beasts! Hu-
man love is - human, and 
therefore it must be guided by 
reason, subject to conscience, 
worthy of creatures who are 
also the children of God. Is all 
this "theology" and is "theol-
ogy" a high, vague, wispy 
cloud? Well even a teen-ager 
can see the difference between 
boy and girl driving in the park 
-which can be wholesome fun; 
and parking in the drive-
which can be moral pus. 

Pontius Pilate sent Christ to 
crucifixion by washing his 
hands. Youth can do the same 
thing today by dirtying its 
hands. Doesn't St. Paul talk 
about the re-crucifying of 

Christ by Christians? Oh, the 
phoney philosophy of the world 
will guarantee to dye your con-
science a white gold the way 
the beauty pariors do hair. It 
is a synthetic rinse, alibis like: 
"Well, that is my weakness" or 
"If you love somebody, what 
can you do?" or "God will un-
derstand." Aren't they ever 
afraid He will understand that 
they broke His laws like pea-
nut-shells, or put His com-
mandments out of the way like 
a floor-lamp that got in the 
way at a party? 

Certainly at times it is hard 
to be pure. But do you know 
of anything in life really 
worthwhile that isn't hard? 
Perhaps that is just why Our 
Blessed Lord on the cross al-
lowed a soldier to open His side 
so that we might see the great 
red valentine of His own crim-
son bleeding Heart, a Heart not 
pierced by a tiny Cupid's arrow 
but with °a long cruel spear; a 
Heart not fringed with dainty 
paper-lace, but circled, as St. 
Margaret Mary saw it in a vis-
ion, with a wreath of sharp 
thorns. He wanted to remind 
us that if we want to keep our 
hearts clean and good they too 
must be surrounded by the 
thorns of hard things - the 
thorns of self-respect and self-
restraint; the thorns of decency 
and modesty; the thorns of 
will-power and (what is more 
important) won't power! 

After all, Valentine means 
"Strong!" 

God bless you! 



KEEP THE DOOR OPEN 

Address Delivered on February 21, 1954 

If a man has huge feet and 
wears a pair of shoes that look 
like landing-barges, it is a 
phenomenal salesman who will 
interest him in a pair of shoes, 
size six and a half A, though 
they be the finest footwear in 
the world. Sermons, in one 
sense, are like shoes. I mean the 
sermon that fits one group of 
people neatly' and nicely is of 
absolutely no concern to an-
other group. Why for instance 
should the girls who are pray-
ing fiercely, "Dear St. Anne, get 
me a man-as quick as you 
can!" want to be bothered with 
a thundered warning on the 
evils of divorce? And why 
should "the perils of drunk-
enness" draw anything but a 
drowsy yawn from the teetotal-
ers who, when they say tea, 
mean tea. This is what a 
preacher is up against when it 
comes to choosing a subject, and 
he desperately knows it. Some-
times you figure that the Devil 
would be the only perfect audi-
ence because you could presume 
he was involved in everything. 
But then you remember (for 
one exception) the Devil isn't 
married . . . though there are 
some wives who are sure he is. 

The answer is probably the 
elementary distinction between 
experience and knowledge. 
There are many themes which 

may not here and now concern 
us personally, but about which 
we should be intelligently in-
formed-know the sound prin-
ciples of the matter-so that 
if the situation ever does ring 
our own personal door-bell, or 
even if it shyly seeks our ad-
vice, we shall know the position 
to take or the course to coun-
sel. 

Anyway today's little talk is 
about a certain type of letter 
which is coming in more and 
more frequently. The wor ds are 
always heart-broken, the pages 
often tear-stained, the writer is 
'usually a Catholic mother and 
the subject a straying daughter. 
Sometimes the paragraphs are 
typed and sometimes scribbled 
but the mother is generally 
weeping over - her child's bad 
marriage. "Here I thought I was 
doing everything I could, to rear 
her a good Catholic, and now 
she has run off and married 
outside the church. For twenty 
years I tried to do my best, but 
I guess my best just wasn't 
enough." 

Thousands of mothers have 
groaned that bitter self-re-
proach, but it is undeserved, 
for how could anyone in his 
senses hold such a mother re-
sponsible for such a daughter? 
Way back in the Scriptures, 
centuries before the coming of 



36 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

Christ, poor, patient Job winced 
with that same sick futile feel-
ing. It is the bleak disappoint-
ment of having been let down 
in the two tenderest areas of 
the heart, parenthood and re-
ligion. Job packed his reaction 
into one crushed sentence: "No 
man can lead another unto 
God." 

And it is true. If anyone real-
ly wants to run away from God, 
there are no ropes that will hold 
him, not even heart-strings. But 
how often have I seen it, that 
eventually the straying sinner is 
quietly caught and gently 
drawn back in the loop of a 
Mother's well-fingered rosary. 
And t~is often happens, even 
after the Mother is dead! Out 
of her very grave her prayers 
bloom and bear their fruit! 

But what about the particu-
lar present case where the 
Catholic daughter sets her pret-
ty mouth into a grim red line 
and marries 0 u t sid e the 
Church? We say she "marries" 
outside the Church. The sad 
cold fact is that she has gone 
through a marriage ceremony, 
but in the eyes of God's Church, 
and therefore in the eyes of 
God, she is not married at all. 
This may strike some people as 
high-handed ecclesiastical ar-
rogance, but suppose you look 
at it this way. Matrimony is a 
Sacrament; and the laws for 
validly recelvmg the Sacra-
ments lie with the Church. The 
same Christ who gave us the 
Sacraments, also gave us the 
Church to administer them. 

And one law for the Sacrament 
of Matrimony is that a Catho-
lic must be married in the pre-
sence of a priest and two wit-
nesses. For that reason a Catho-
lic can no more go to City Hall 
to be married than he can go 
to City Hall to be baptized. He 
can no more be married by a 
minister than he can be con-
firmed or anointed by a minis-
ter. If these attitudes seem to be 
bi ts of stony arrogance, they are 
but chips off the central Rock, 
the doctrine that Our Blessed 
Lord founded only one true 
Church, and this is her teach-
ing. In geology all rocks may be 
equal; in theology we believe 
there is only one: Peter, the 
Rock upon which Christ found-
ed His Church. 

Notice though that the 
Church does not go tinkling its 
bell and flourishing its book in-
to the domain of the state or 
into the conscience of the non-
Catholic. Since marriage besides 
being a spiritual Sacrament is 
also a civil contract, certainly 
the State has the right to make 
laws for that contract like li-
censes, blood-tests and all the 
rest. And since the Catholic 
Church does not make marriage 
laws for non-Catholics, she re-
spects as valid any marriage of 
non-Catholics pro per 1 y con-
tracted whether performed by a 
minister or any lawful official. 

The marriage the Church 
does not recognize as valid, is 
the marriage entered into by a 
Catholic without the necessary 
priest and two witnesses. Such 



KEEP THE DOOR OPEN 37 

a Catholic would not be meeting 
a serious requirement for the 
valid reception of a Sacrament, 
the Sacrament of Matrimony. 
Need I add that if Catholic par-
ents attend such a marriage of 
their child, that is, one perform-
ed by a public official or a min-
ister, these parents are cooper-
ating in something which, ac-
cording to the Church, is grave-
ly sinful. But, you tell me, the 
ceremony has long since been 
performed. They (let us say the 
Catholic girl and the non-
Catholic man) are living to-
gether as man and wife. What 
should be done about it, what 
attitude taken? This is what the 
Catholic parents want to know 
. . . they and, their sisters and 
their brothers and their cousins , 
and their aunts. 

Well, if I were in your place 
I should try to be kinder than 
kind. I should try to remember 
that after all the sin was not 
committed against me but 
against God, so what right have 
I to explode like a volcano? 
True, your heart may be a dark 
cave of disappointment, but if 
you come running out of it 
waving a club you may drive 
your daughter away from God 
forever. Nobody can approve 
what is wrong, but a brutal, 
b li s t e ring condemnation of 
wrong isn't always the best in-
vitation to return to right. Use 
the blow-torch on a human soul, 
and instead of burning off the 
stain, you may just harden it, 
fix it in deeper. 

So to the parents of such a 

daughter manacled to a bad 
marriage I would say: Pity her, 
pray for her, be kind to her, vis-
it her. Yes, visit her! It is true 
you cannot approve her situa-
tion, but if you act gently and 
sympathetically (not like some- . 

one proudly determined to win 
an argument but like someone 
humbly hoping to save a soul) 
you may be able to persuade 
her to have the marriage recti-
fied. You would be surprised 
how often this can be done-
and done with no conspicuous 
church ceremony-as long as 
neither the girl nor the man is 
entangled in any previous mar-
riage. 

The curling whip of angry 
words will lash a person, but 
when you draw it back, the 
whip returns to you empty and 
the person is still away. Kind-
ness is the only thin str ing you 
have to bring someone back 
Violence breaks all ties, even 
family ties. Don't try to nag her 
back into the Church or drag 
h er back into the Church. Ju'st 
build the path by little acts of 
kindness and more kindness, 
and prayers and more prayers, 

, and then perhaps at the right 
mellow moment a simple word 
of loving suggestion from your 
heart may work wonders! 

After all I cannot believe that 
a Catholic girl mar ried outside 
the Catholic Church walks 
down any rose-paths of happi-
ness while she is out of the 
Church. I hold that no matter 
how luxuriously she seems to 
live on the outside, she is hav-



38 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

ing a hard time on the inside, 
and if she doesn't come back, it 
isn't because she is happy in her 
exile, but only stubborn. One 
corner of her heart must always 
be in secret agony. She may of 
course even scream that she is 
perfectly contented, but when 
her loud protest dies down, 
there is her conscience still 
ringing like an insistent burg-
lar alarm. Why not? You can-
not be a Catholic all your liv-
ing days, and know it is the 
only True Faith, and attend its 
Mass, and receive its Sacra-
ments and say its beads-and 
then suddenly toss the whole 
thing into an ash barrel like an 
old Christmas tree. The Faith 
is a tree whose roots are sunk 
deep in any Catholic heart, and 
they don't come out easily. As 
a matter of fact I don't think 
they ever come out at all. I have 
talked with more than a few 
Catholic girls who had snapped 
their fingers in the face of God 
and went through the motions 
of a marriage outside the 
Church, but who years later 
quietly slipped through the 
side-door of the Church and 
came back. And when they do, 
when their bad marriage is re-
set like a broken leg, and bless-
ed by the Church, the first thing 
they blurt out is that all this 
time, despite the love and plea-
sure and everything else, they 
were never really happy. Be-
cause you cannot slip happiness 
on like a necklace or imprint it 
like a kiss or wear it like a 
bridal gown. Happiness must 

come from within. It starts in-
side. But if inside, deep down 
in the heart there is the gnaw-
ing knowledge that you have 
defied God in a serious matter, 
if over the soul hangs the black 
shadow of mortal sin, how can 
there ever be genuine joy? 

Turn on all the gay lights of 
pleasure, beat all the drums of 
distraction-guilt is still coiled 
down there like a snake in the 
shadows. This sense that all is 
not right goes with the girl on 
her very honeymoon ; and when 
she is alone, the smile dies and 
she stares into space. Later this 
sad sense of living in sin, this 
longing for something missing 
that she desperately wants, taps 
her on the shoulder at the 
strangest places. She may sud-
denly feel it as she sees the 
crowds hurrying to Midnight 
Mass at Christmas, or as she 
looks down into the casket of 
a close friend killed in an ac-
cident, or even as she comes 
upon the pictures in the news-
paper of a wedding in her old 
church . .. the uneasiness is al-
ways there, like a dull steady 
tooth-ache in her conscience, a 
sharp sword in her deepest soul. 

Even now as I speak to you 
someone out there may be 
churning with the temptation to 
marry a man outside the 
Church . . . possibly because he 
is divorced and you cannot 
marry him in the Church. Well, 
he may be rich, and he may be 
handsome, and he may be able 
to give you everything~very­
thing but happiness. How can 



KEEP THE DOOR OPEN 39 

you be happy when you will be 
telling the Almighty (not in 
words but in deed) that some 
human being means more to 
you than your God or your 
Faith? Doesn't it seem that St. 
Paul almost had just such a 
young girl in mind when he 
wrote to the Galatians: "I am 
astounded that you are so quick 
to be a deserter! Who is it that 
~as fascinated you, cast a spell 
over you that you refuse obedi-
ence to the true Gospel? Are 
you out of your senses that hav-
ing begun spiritually you are 
now wholly taken up with the 
flesh?" 

That was the letter St. Paul 
wrote, but the girl who is go-
ing to marry outside the Church 
should leave a letter like this : 
"Dear Mom and Dad ... I'm go-

ing to marry him at any cost. 
I don't care whether your hearts 
are broken. I don't care if I 
am a disgrace to my Catholic 
education. I don't care if I'm 
leaving the Church and the 
Sacraments. I don't care wheth-
er my soul is damned. I don't 
care if I'm responsible for my 
children being lost to the faith, 
or their children. I care for 
nothing but myself, my will, my 
pleasure, my happiness." 

There is an answer to that 
letter. It is: nobody leaves God 
and finds happiness. And if you 
have lost it, a tortured heart 
yearning for the Communion 
Rail, the only way to find it is 
to come back to Him, the God 
of m ercy and of love. 

God bless you! 



OUTSTRETCHED HANDS 

Address Delivered on February 28, 1954 

If Heaven had a Complaint 
Department, perhaps the busi-
est window would be "Unan-
swered Prayers." At least 
I think that the question people 
put most often to priests is: 
"Why aren't my prayers 
heard?" And the priest who in 
his time has perhaps preached 
with rich and rolling eloquence 
on "Ask and ye shall receive" 
almost feels that now he is 
supposed to find God an "out." 
As though "Ask and ye shall 
receive" were a handsomely il-
luminated script or document 
like a contract or a deed or an 
insurance policy, and he smug-
ly points to the fine print un-
derneath and suavely explains, 
"I'm afraid you overlooked 
this" or "Your particular case 
is definitely excluded here." 
There is no such trickery in 
the Trinity. God needs no de-
fense, because He is God, and 
that means all-good. 

True, this would be easier to 
see if the answer to every pray-
er came out as promptly and 
precisely as a piece of pie at the 
automat - or like that rather 
recent incident in London. A 
young Catholic lawyer (bit of 
a barrister, y' know) had his 
shingle hanging out but no cli-
ents hurrying in. He was de-
pressed almost to desperation. 
Then he got an idea. He left 

his office and went down to a 
little chapel at Moorfield and 
prayed fervently, almost fierce-
ly, before the picture of Saint 
Thomas More, who in his day 
had been the most brilliant 
lawyer in the realm, in fact the 
Lord High Chancellor. When 
the young lawyer got back to 
his chambers, there was a note 
scribbled on the telephone pad 
by the man in the next office. 
A client would be in at eleven. 
The client turned out to be a 
very important person and was 
so pleased with the young law-
yer's work that he introduced 
him to several prominent 
friends and started him on a 
very promising legal career. By 
one of those eyebrow-raising, 
"let me get that again" coinci-
dences, the client's name was 
Mr. Thomas More. 

Oh, if prayers were always 
answered as dramatically as 
that, or even if they were dra-
matically left unanswered and 
we could see why ... For ex-
ample, if you prayed to catch a 
certain train (and you missed 
it) or if you prayed to make 
a certain plane (and had to 
hitch-hike forty miles on a 
winter road, as happened to me, 
and missed it by one minute)-
if then the next morning you 
read in the paper how the train 
was wrecked or the plane had 



OUTSTRETCHED HANDS 41 

crashed . . . then we could see 
why our prayer was not an-
swered, and be grateful! But as 
a rule, the mountain peak of 
God's design and providence is 
not so sharply clear. Often it 
is hidden in the clouds, dark 
swirling mists through which 
human eyes cannot peer. 

But way back fifteen centur-
ies ago, one of the dazzling 
luminaries of theology, Saint 
Augustine, dropped some real-
istic pointed hints why some of 
our prayers are not heard. The 
way he phrased it, it has almost 
the ring of a college yell: "Mali 
mala male petimus." In a kind 
free-wheeling translation, that 
would mean that some of us ask 
for wrong things, some in a 
wrong way, and some while 
kneeling on the very ground of 
wrong-doing. 

The wrong things? 
Now, nobody in his right 

mind would brazenly pray for 
what is downright sinful. But 
often our faith is so thin we 
just annoy God asking for trif-
les, the small change of tempor-
al things, hardly ever asking 
the great gold of grace and sal-
vation itself. We pray "Deliver 
us from all evil." But don't 
you know that in the eyes of 
God there is on this whole earth 
only one real evil-and it is not 
poverty, it is not pain, it is not 
disappointment. It is sin. Be-
cause only sin can clang against 
us the gates of Heaven and 
keep us from God forever. 

How ironic against that, is 
the prayer of a woman amply 

dressed in a flowery chintz like 
a slipcover and upholstered 
herself like a sofa, who now at 
breakfast between her fourth 
and fifth jelly - do ugh nut, 
breathes (with a little difficul-
ty) a petulant prayer to God 
to take off a few pounds from 
her tonnage. Or a high-school 
boy blowing the thick dust off 
his chemistry book, and saying 
a panicky prayer that some-
how the Lord will see him 
through tomorrow's exam with 
flying colors and bubbling test-
tubes! 

It is perfectly proper to pray 
for God's help in our particular 
need, but it is good to remem-
ber that God is not a traffic cop 
who suddenly holds up his hand 
in the middle of the street-cor-
ner and stops all the normal 
course of things, holding back, 
you may say, the laws of na-
ture while our petition goes 
screaming through with motor-
cycle escort! Our prayer should 
be not so much for exceptions 
or exemptions to the general 
rule, but rather strength to bear 
the order of things as God has 
established them. 

I remember once in the 
springtime seeing a sobbing 
mother kneeling on the green 
cushion of a grave, her hands 
clasped upon the tombstone as 
though it was a pew in church. 
She prayed there like that, she 
told me later, till she had bur-
ied the black devil of bitterness 
that had darkened her heart 
ever since her boy had been 
plucked away in the bright 



42 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

bloom of his youth. Before this 
she had tried everything to for-
get-tried taking a trip, tried 
plunging into her work, tried 
listening to the sympathy and 
the counsel of her friends. But 
until she got down on her knees 
and turned to God in prayer-
really prayed-nothing helped. 
But prayer had flung up the 
gloomy blinds of grief and let 
in the golden sunlight of God's 
own comfort. 

As to asking the wrong way 
-I suppose the father of a fam-
ily never lived who did not 
at one time or other grumble 
that the only time his children 
recognized his existence was 
when they wanted something. 
"Dad, may I have the car to-
night?" When the "bite" is on 
and the hand is out, then Dad 
suddenly assumes in the family 
a stature of importance. But 
wouldn't this make any normal 
sensitive Dad glumly wonder if 
he were really the father of a 
family, or just the disbursing 
agent of a little corporation? 
Well, how do you think Our 
Father in Heaven feels if the 
only language we ever speak to 
Him is the prayer of "Gimme" 
or "Please"? If we didn't need 
something, would we ever no-
tice Him? 

It must be far from flattering 
to the too-tolerant Almighty. 
Honestly, I think some people 
must really picture God as a 
sort of super-clerk in glistening 
white, behind a long, long soda 
fountain with all kinds of 
chrome levers and porcelain 

taps. This one is marked Jobs; 
that one, Boy Friend; the 
next one Health; then Ex-
ams - and so on. And as soon 
as our order comes in, He is 
supposed to spurt that particu-
lar syrup into the glass and 
'<and it over-quick. And if He 
doesn't do it immediately, we 
get a little impatient in our 
prayers, a little irritated, and 
there is a kind of pious pound-
ing on the marble counter-
"What's holding things up, 
anyway?" Look: we cannot 
turn the Deity into a delivery 
boy-but oh, how some of us 
tryl 

As regards asking against a 
background of wrong-doing, 
tonight in more than one home 
across America, some boy will 
put out his hand across the 
table and whine, "Mom, kin I 
have some more?"~more any-
thing from an ear of corn to a 
piece of cake. And when the 
mother sees that hand stretched 
out, grimy, smudgy, just plain 
dirty, she will glare, "Willie, 
where did you get those hands? 
How dare you come to the table 
like that. Now leave at once 
and don't ask for one more 
thing until you have washed!" 
How many of us larger people 
are in a larger sense stretching 
out toward God dirty hands, 
hands filthy with sin, and ask-
ing Him to fill them with some 
favor? Should we not first 
clean up before we dare speak 
up? 

Ponder the parable of the 
second-story man who has just 



OUTSTRETCHED HANDS 43 

smashed a window and ran-
sacked a home. Now he is 
climbing down the ladder. Sud-
denly a rung snaps, and he 
plunges to the ground, breaking 
a leg. All at once there is the 
owner of the house looking 
down from an upper window 
. . . so what does the culprit 
do? He calls up, "Mr. Owner, 
first of all I want you to get 
me the best doctor in town, I'd 
also appreciate a little help 
with my hospital bills. And by 
the way, I could stand a new 
ladder." You think this is a 
fantastic, grotesque exaggera-
tion-but think again: haven't 
we all done something like that 
to the Man Upstairs-shattered 
not God's windows but His 
commandments, invaded His 
Dominion, robbed Him of His 
due honor, torn virtue apart-
by our sins and more sins? Are 
we in any position to ask any-
thing except Mercy? And if we 
do ask for anything else, should 
it not be with deepest humility 
and broken-hearted sorrow? 

We think that what we ask is 
for our good, but the road of 
life takes some strange curves. 
Remember the ten lepers in the 
Gospel? Here they were with 
their blotched and horrible 
masks of faces, following Our 
Lord, hoarsely pleading to be 
healed. So He heard their pray-
er. But the very moment their 
leprous fingers, numb and dead 
as twigs on a tree, began to feel 
the ruddy vibrant pulse of 
health, they all-all but one-
forgot the Christ that cured 

them. Ten lepers sick, sought 
out the Lord, clung to Him, 
prayed to Him. Ten lepers 
cured-nine of them never even 
went back to say "Thanks!" 
Perhaps instead they took the 
first muddy path back to sin . 
Isn't it better to crawl into 
Heaven, even as a leper? 

God the Father was looking 
not at the individual request. 
but at the over-all picture. Isn't 
that what every good father 
does? Isn't there many a boy 
going to bed tonight with an 
upset stomach because some 
short-sighted, indulgent father 
(or mother) gave the child all 
the chocolates he wanted-in 
other words, gave him just 
what he asked for? Our Father 
in Heaven is too wise and too 
loving ever to do that with us, 
his children. The wisdom we 
lack, He has. Where we are 
blind, He sees. But a little 
poem, whose author I cannot 
find, mirrors that thought clear 
as a Holy Water font: 

I know not by what methods 
rare-

But this I know: God answers 
prayer! 

I know that He has given 

His word 

Which tells us prayer is always 
heard 

And will be answered, soon 
or late ... 

And so I pray, and calmly wait. 

I know not if the blessing 
sought 



44 BRIDGE TO BETTER LIVING 

Will come in just the way I 
thought; 

I leave my prayer with Him 
alone 

Whose Will is wiser than 

.my own, 

Assured that He will grant 

my quest, 

Or send some answer far 

more blest! 

God bless you! 



THE PURPOSE OF THE CATHOLIC HOUR 

(Extract from the address of the late Patrick Cardinal Hayes at the in-
augural program of the Catholic Hour in the studio of the National 
Broadcasting Company, New York City, March 2, 1930.) 

Our congratulations and our gratitude are extended to the National , 
Council of Catholic Men and its officials, and to all who, by their financial 
support, have made it possible to use this offer of the National Broad-
casting Company. The heavy expense of managing and financing a 
weekly program, its musical numbers, its speakers, the subsequent an-
swering of inquiries, must be met . . . 

This radio hour is for all the people of the United states. To our 
fellow-citizens, in this word of dedication, we wish to express a cordial 
greeting and, indeed, congratulations. For this radio hour is one of 
service to America, which certainly will listen in interestedly, and even 
sympathetically, I am sure, to the voice of the ancient Church with its 
historic background of all the centuries of the Christian era, and with 
its own notable contribution to the discovery, exploration, foundation 
and growth of our glorious country . . . 

Thus to voice before a vast public the Catholic Church is no light 
task. Our prayers will be with those who have that task in hand. We 
feel certain that it will have both the good will and the good wishes of 
the great majority of our countrymen. Surely, there is no true lover 
of our Country who does not eagerly hope for a less worldly, a less 
material, and a more spiritual standard among our people. 

With good will, with kindness and with Christ-like sympathy for 
all, this work is inaugurated. So may it continue. So may it be ful-
filled. This word of dedication voices, therefore, the hope that this radio 
hour may serve to make known, to explain with the charity of Christ, 
our faith, which we love even as we love Christ Himself. May it serve 
to make better understood that faith as it really is-a light revealing 
the pathway to heaven; a strength, and a power divine through Christ; 
pardoning our sins, elevating, consecrating our common every-day duties 
and joys, bringing not only justice but gladness and peace to our search-
ing and questioning hearts. 



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