Word: secularism
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Last week in London took place what British Roman Catholics and some zealous Nonconformists called "a vast World Congress of the Godless"-an international meeting of the World Union of Freethinkers. Founded in 1880, the Union is a coalition of ethical societies, the National Secular Society, the Rationalist Press Association. Freethinker doctrine defines a Freethinker not as godless but as "one who rejects unverifiable authority in matters of religious opinion, accepts reason as the ultimate test and regards it as the right and duty of every individual to think things out for himself. Many Freethinkers are deists; many...
...rules forbade kissing at the church altar between bride and bridegroom; the throwing of confetti or rice (an ancient fertility symbol) at the church door. Banned was secular and operatic music such as the Wagner and Mendelssohn wedding marches, Oh, Promise Me, At Dawning etc. Instead, Dr. Piepkorn recommended Bach and a number of lesser church composers. And he directed that wedding rehearsals be brief, dignified non-conversational. Apparently shocked at newspaper accounts of the casual gaiety of the rehearsal of the John Roosevelt-Anne Clark wedding last month, Dr. Piepkorn said: "They must have had a merry time...
Commonweal's reversal last week called attention to a widening split among Catholics over Spain. The publications of the British Dominican order (Blackfriars) and the French Dominicans (La Vie Intellectuelle), and the (Dominican-inspired) secular Temps Present in Paris also have attacked Franco, plumped for nonpartisanship. Recently Author Georges Bernanos, French Catholic and Rightist, assailed Franco in a book (Grands cimetières sous la lune), and last week he was joined by another Catholic writer, Victor Montserrat, who defended the Loyalist Basque clergy (Le Drame d'un peuple incompris). The split was dramatized after the recent World...
Proudest achievement of the socialist-minded Mexican Government is its school system. In 1910 Mexico had only 600 State-supported schools and 70% of its citizens were illiterate. But the post-revolution constitution of 1917 decreed free, secular education for all. By 1921 President Obregón began to send missionaries into the rural districts to establish secular schools. A constitutional amendment in 1934 gave the Government control of all primary and secondary education, directed that it should be socialistic. Today, despite the bitter opposition of the Roman Catholic Church to the new educational plan, Mexico has some...
...lies less with the churches than with the Government, particularly with Secretary of the Interior Ickes and zealous Indian Commissioner John Collier. Last week in Atlantic City, missionary chagrin over this state of affairs spilled over. At a Conference of Friends of the Indian-representing two secular Indian associations and Indian mission workers of 28 Protestant churches-a report cited lawlessness, drinking, vice, illegal marriages in Indian communities, blamed the "hands-off policy" of the Government...