Word: materialistic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...good Communist can still go to church in East Germany-provided his reasons are purely esthetic. A worried young comrade had asked the Communist youth paper, Junge Welt, whether a "true materialist" was doing right in listening to concerts and classical music in church. Replied Propagandist Gerhart Eisler in the manner of a Red Emily Post...
...Never in my whole life have I believed in God nor do I intend to start. I consider myself a true materialist. That never stopped me from visiting churches . . . splendid monuments of the past ... I have heard some very good concerts in various churches and still like to attend them . . . Handel, Bach and Beethoven are among the greatest composers. They will surely be played and loved even after nobody on earth believes in God any more ... A true materialist can certainly hear a good concert of classical music in a church without losing his materialist virginity...
...change was caused partly by the very disasters that struck the world during Pacelli's lifetime, for they branded into men of all faiths a new need for direction and values beyond materialist optimism. Partly it was caused by the death of the old European order, which forced the Vatican to deal not with monarchs or heads of state but with the people, and to find new ways of reaching them. Above all, it was caused by Pius XII's insistence that the papacy had a mission to assert Christian truths about all phases of human life...
...almost a quarter of a century, Philosopher Maritain is familiar with America's authentic face and voice; yet he remains enough of a stranger to stress truths that are overlooked or taken for granted by many Americans. Probably Maritain's central point: "[Americans are] the least materialist among the modern peoples which have attained the industrial stage...
...Maritain, "all this talk about American materialism is no more than a curtain of silly gossip and slander." He coolly measures U.S. attitudes by materialist standards and finds that the label simply will not fit: "America is not egoist; for the common consciousness of America, egoism is shameful . . . There is no avarice in the American cast of mind. The American people are neither squeamish nor hypocritical about the importance of money in the modern world . . . The average European cares about money as well as the average American, but he tries to conceal the fact, for he has been accustomed...