THE GUARDIAN, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1922. PAGE FIVE
paralysis of ce00ain muscles and d,s- Women's Growth In Education
articulation of the joints has compell-
er NOTE edthethewheeldOctOrchair.tO direct his efforts from Lauded By Bishop Shannan,
I00ides on Life of Study I Of ity
Realizing that he could no longer I Rector Catholic Univers
Monsignor Coghlan continue the general practice of medi-
Church of Our Lady of
on the occasion cine he decided to make a study in Development Unequaled in Modern ism. Think of a St. Francis of As-
Times He Tells Catholic Alumnaem sisi, of St. Ignatius of Loyola, of St.
of golden jubilee anesthesia and angalesia, branches of Moral Inheritance of Catholic Ages
last Sunday, had
guests present to
tribute of love and honor.
who took part in the
a Were His Eminence Cardi-
who, at the jubilee
Monsignor Coghlan
of activity in the
Right Rev. Them-
the Catholic Univer-
the sermon at the
Moore of Philadel-
the jubilee dinner declar-
Coghlan's influence
throughout the state
Monsignor Coghlan, a
was seventy-five
Fourth of July.
B. Pittar, S. J.,
at the Jesuit Novitiate
. Hudson after
more than a year. He
months in Georgetown
being taken to New
most dramatic stories
and his years
to the sick and dying
is that which had to
sick call which
one night. It was after
the summons came to
' A small boy had rung
i given the porter the ad-
Georgetown.
Pittar to go
said. "A sick man needs
'clock when Father Pit-
house and he found it
But the front door was
and entering he per-
the second floor. He
the door was thrown
with a pistol in his
at the figure of the
asked him who he
he Wanted. Father Pit-
he had come in re-
call.
Sick Call
said the man, "and
You. Who called you
the boy as
description of my boy
Years ago," said the
and his mother had
and was plan
lay own" life this very
minutes I would have
comforted the man
in a hopeful mood.
visited him regularly.
a Convert
"old gray horse"
which he traveled
was known from Ana-
and every
starting off,
were a doctor making
homes of the sick
Many a home
gifts from a hamper
Father Pittar car-
blizzard or storm
for Father Pittar
Was often said that
:Stood for nights with
tad one eye open, while
disregarded union
Was a convert. He
sixty-five years
the Episcopal faith
of St. John's Col-
as converted.
Barclay,
Society of St.
come to Aries to
the top of a
recently dis=
Lacaze-Duthiers,
is "The Christian
some figures
a semicircular table,
round loaves of
incisions. To
of bread and
bearing a dish
he personages is
a dog is licking
composition is said
the verses in the
Matthew and Saint
to the conversation
SYrian woman,
It. McMechan,
Erie, Ohio, a few
of Cleveland
and women in
because they do
they crave.
now 44 years old
:o a wheel chair for
of an infection, he
patient.
diagnosed as ar-
the medical and surgical profession
which he felt had not kept pace with
the progress in other lines of these
callingSof a Medical Family
Dr. McMechan was a graduate at
25 from the Ohio Medical College, Cin- I
!
cinnati. His father and grandfather
were also graduates in medicine from
the same school. Dr. McMechan is also
a graduate from St. Xavier college,
Cincinnati. For some time he was able
to do his own typewriting, but increas-
ing paralysis of his arms and hands
soon compelled him to turn this task
over to his wife, and to her, Dr. Mc- I
Mechan pays the beautiful tribute, '1
spoken with tears in his eyes that l
"she has never made me feel that I
[
was a burden to her."
Very Busy Despite H andicaps
Despite his physical handicaps Dr.
McMechan is usually in attendance at
state and national medical gatherings.
He is chairman of the research com-
mittee of the National Anesthesia Re-
search Society; secretary general of
the Interstate Association of Anesthe-
tists and nominee for the 1923 terns in
this office. He is engaged to attend
the joint convention of several groups
of physicians who specialize in the
study of anesthesia, in Columbus, O.,
October 30 and Nov. 1. On November
14th and 15th he will attend an or-
ganization meeting of the southern
association of anesthetists at Chatta-
nooga, Tenn., and will read a paper.
Irish.lavarian
Dr. McMechan is of Bavarian an-
cestry on his maternal side and of
Irish on his paternal.
"How could a man of such ancestry
fail to overcome obstacles whatever
they might be?" he asked during the
recent convention of the Public Health
Association in this city.
"Too busy every day to worry about
conditions as they are," is the philos-
ophy of both the doctor and his wife.
Devout in Faith
Medical and general literature from
all over the world engage their atten-
tion, and a goodly number of hours
each day is given to the reading, study
and "hork.
Devout members of their faith in
every sense of the word, the doctor is
the object of many ervent prayers
for his recovery. Petitions are being
offered daily by an aunt, a nun in the
convent at Grosse Point, Mich.
The case of Dr. McMechan is being
studied not only by himself but by
eminent physicians and surgeons. The
doctor would like to effect a cure
through his own treatment, he said, if
that be God's will, and in bringing
about his own release from the illness,
he would seek to aid others similarly
afflicted.
G. K. Chesterton
promises to be a prolific topic for
Catholic writers. Father O'Keeffe, a
Paulist, with a capacity for curious
questions, is already contributing to
the columns of "The Missionary" on
"The Significance of Chesterton's Re-
ligious Conversion," and "The Tablet"
of London has this interesting com-
ment in a recent issue:
Mr. Chesterton has said his first
public word as a Catholic to Catholic
in Blackfriars for October, in which
he has begun a series of short articles
on "Where all Roads Lead." Charac- I
teristically he opens with the remark :
that while some years ago a convert
was expected to give his reasons for
joining the Catholic ChurclL he is to-
day "really expected to give his rea-
sons for not joining it. This may
seem an exaggeration; but I believe it
to stand for a subconscious truth in
thousands of minds," so strong and all
pervading is what Mr. Chcsterton calls
"the challenge of the Church. I mean
that the world has recently become
aware of that challenge in a curious
and ahnost creepy fashion .... The
world has become conscious that it is
not Catholic. Only lately it would i
have been about as likely to brood on I
the fact that it is not Confucian. And [
all the array of reasons for not join- I
ing the Church of Rome marked but
the beginning of the ultimate reason
for joining it ..... That sort of pres-
ence and pressure of the Church I be-
lieve to be universal and Ubiquitous
today; not only among Anglicans, but
among Agnostics. I repeat that I do
not mean that they have no real ob-
jections; on the contrary, I mean that
they have begun really to object; they
have begun to kick and struggle." And
this common consciousness of the chal-
flenge of the Church Mr. Chesterton
finds to be connected with something
else that was the strongest of the in-
tellectual forces that dragged him
towards the truth: "not merely the
survival of the faith, but the singular
nature of his survival." Old religion,
years old, as it may conventially be called, is not
was old, but "a religion that refuses to
bed. Since 1910 grow old.., a very young religion,
(By N. C. W. C. News Service)
Louisville, Ky., Oct. 30.The amaz-
ing development of our Cathblic
schools for women during the nine-
Seenth century is an educational fact
unequalled in modern times, according
to the Right Rev. Thomas J. Shahan,
rector of the Catholic University, who
preached the sermon at the high mass
celebrated in the Cathedral here yes-
terday as part of the convention pro-
Vincent of Paul, of a Saint Teresa, a
Saint Catherine of Siena, a Saint Joan
of Arc, to mention only a few of the
good men and women whom the whole
world reveres and admires, and who
are nothing if not models of Catholic
belief and life, and indeed of Catholic
training.
Catholic Sisterhoods
"It is our Catholic teaching sister-
hoods, who have kept alive this tre-
mendous moral force of Catholic sanc-
gram of the International Federation I tity. Their rules, their names, their
of Catholic Alumnae. I dress, their admirable devotion to
Bishop Shahan said in part: I their saintly founders or models, their
"In you are visible the thousands of I reverence for the spirit and their daily
good Catholic women who from the imitation of the Saints, have kept
Atlantic to the Pacific devoted them- alive in our proud and materialistic
selves in past time with incredible
zeal and marvellous success to the
proper training of mind and heart in
the multitudes of young women who
would otherwise have been lost to
Catholic life and progress. Each one
here present is spokesman for the en-
tire range of accompl:shment, influ-
ence, and success which can be fairly
credited to the beloved home of good
studies andgrcat virtues which she
represents.
"In each onc of you are depicted, so
to speak, the zeal, constancy and de-
votion, the industry, courage and en-
ergy, the patience and hope, the faith
and the love, ( which have honored
these saintly communities of Ameri-
can Catholic teaclmrs East and West,
North and South, for the better part
of two centuries. For a moment your
persons fade away, to reveal these
many points of light and sweetness,
these eentres and sources of Catholic
education of which our American
Catholic womanhood is rightly proud,
and to whose quiet but constant activ-
ity it is owing that our American
Catholic life has never wanted for
highly educated wmnen, in great num-
bers, a moral leadership at all times,
deeply and widely felt in every neigh-
borhood.
Three Fountains of Catholic Life
"Almost in this very city arose a
century ago three of these rich foun-
tains of the higher Catholic life, whose
sweet )eaters have overflowed the en-
tire nation, three institutions purely
American in origin and nobly typical
of the hundreds of similar institutions
which have followed in the way point-
ed out by the brave women who first]
crossed the Alleghenies as heralds of]
the new Ame:icau freedom and apes- I
tles of the Cross and the Gospel. I
Louisiana and Maryland offer a still I
earlier devotion to the religious and l
secular interests of Catholic girlhood.
However, the various merits and ser-
vices of these pioneers are lost in the
amazing development of our Catholic
schools for women during the nine-
teenth century. This educational fact,
truly unequalled in modern times,
takes on a living and eloquent reality
in your persons. You represent in a
very striking way the wonderful pow-
er of the Catholic Church to overcome'
adverse circumstances and to mould
the hearts of her children in the spirit
and on the example of her Divine
Founder. You represent indeed a cen-
tury of education of our American
Catholic womanldnd. But what does
that stand for, and in what way has it
affected our national life, chiefly in its
moral, social and religious aspects ?
The Bridge of Inheritance
"This Catholic education is the
bridge over which has come down to
our youth the moral inheritance of so
many ages of Catholic sanctity of
life, of successful imitation of Jesus
Christ. These holy men and women
have been in several respects the most
influential teachers of mankind. Think
of the glorious martyrs who died that I
religion might live, of the confessors I
and virgins and widows who raised the I
torch of truth and virtue during the
obscure and perilous night of barbar-
rather especially a religion of young
men ...... It does not merely stand
firm like an old guard; it has recap-
tured the initiative and is conducting
the counter-attack."
So Mr. Chesterton goes on to the
illustration of the special point of this
first article, which has for its sub-
title "The Youth of the Church." Bat
as to the fundamental reason for a
man's joining the Catholic Church he
had already said a brief word which is
doubtless autobiographical: "There
are only two reasons that are really
fundamental. One is that he believes
it to be the solid objective truth,
which is true whether he likes it or
not, and the other, that he seeks lib-
eration from his sins. If there be any
man for whom these are not the main
motives, is idle to inquire what were
his Philosophical or Historical or emo-
nitial reasons for joining the old re-
ligion; for he has not joined it at all."
Illustrations of the truth of these
words we have had in plenty.
world tile duty and the meaning, the
I lessons and the example of saintly and
• perfect lives, as the end and the justi-
fication of the Gospel teachings, which
tolerate no moderate and calculating
religion. "Be you therefore perfect,"
says Our Lord, 'as also your Heavenly
Father is perfect.'
A Debt of Admiratioat
"Nor should it be forgotten that our
Catholic teaching communities were
simultaneously burdened with works
of material charity, hospitals, orphan-
ages, refugees and homes of all kinds,
nor that they heeded ever the call of
the missions, foreign and domestic,
nor that they followed as ministering
angels the cruel progress of our wars
nor that they bent themselves joy-
fully to every task that ecclesiastical
authority assigned them. In the
hearts of this audience are laid up,
officially as it were, the gratitude
and the reverence of the American
Catholic people for all our teaching
comnmnities, great and small, young
and old, 1)rosperous and struggling.
They arc beyond the poor praise of
words, but we can never be free from
the debt of admiration, gratitude, and
honor that they have imposed upon
the Catholic Church in the United
States.
Zeal and Courage
"What a vast field lies open for the
zeal and the courage, the prudence and
the constancy of this association! Not
only education, but social selice, lit-
erature, the press, the theatre, the
arts, bespeak the attention and con-
cern of all its members. Every ex-
pression of life is now tainted by a
destructive materialism, and an oaious
paganism of thought reveals itself in
the current concepts of the state and
the child, of law and morality, of right
and duty.
The Conflict Ahead.
"Our Catholic womanhood is facing
on all sides a long and arduous con-
flict for the preservation of great
principles and truths which have hith-
erto held together our civilization, but
in our de-Christianized society can oe
saved only by wgorous reaction, and
by the co-ordination and cooperation
of all the moral and social forces at
our disposal.
(atholic Womuahood'a Activities
"The International Federation oi
Catholic Alumnae is a clearing-house
of zeal, good-will, knowledge and
method in the widespread conflict be-
tween our former Christian order of
life and the new concepts of life as
borrowed frmn a philosophy which
equates man with the brute, puts out
the lights of heaven, and reduces life
to the wretched level of a savage con-
flict for food and shelter between the
cradle and the grave. The Federa-
tion is the meeting place of all the
higher activities of that Catholic wo-
nmnhood which our educational instl-
tutions have b.een training with such"
marked success, and which has al-
ready contributed so largely to the
religious, moral and social progress of
our country.
Incalculable Service
"We have every reason to believe
that a great enlargement of these
generous activities, more consciously
coordinated and so directed as to com-
bine at once their local and their gen-
eral and collective influence, will ren-
der an incalculable service to our holy
religion and to that Christian civiliza-
tion which has raised wmnankind to
the highest level, and has opened to
it the way of constant progress.
"May Our Blessed Mother, the Seat
of Wisdom, and the honor and glory
of womankind, protect and guide this
association of her - most devoted
daughters, and sustain them by her
powerful intercession in the holy war-
fare on which they have entered for
the preservation of all the ideals of
Catholic womanhood and their trans-
mission to future generations, undi-
minished, unsullied and intact."
You can, by arguments, drew a
number of lines that converge
towards God, and render His existence
and His attributes probable; but you
cannot reach Him along those lines.
The Light Invisible.
MISSOURI CATHOLIC { _ ERESTt_
• UNION DOING GOOD I IB00KS oliN]
WORK FOR FARMERS [ t
(By N. C. W. C. News Service)
St. Louis, Oct. 28.mA public mass
meeting of the people of Osage Coun-
ty, Missouri, was held at Linn, Me., on
Wednesday, under the auspices of the
Catholic Union of Missouri. Hardly
a Catholic family of any of the par-
ishes in the county failed to be rep-
resented, and their members were
augmented by the townspeople gen-
erally and farmers of all creeds.
This mass meeting is one of the
first fruits of the lectures given on
the two previous Sundays in the dif-
ferent Catholic churches of the coun-
£y, and in due time will be followed
by similar mass meetings in St.
Charles County and others of the
state.
The meeting at Linn was preceded
by a Solemn High Mass at 10 o'clock,
the Rev. F. A. Diepenbrock of West-
phalia, Me., being the celebrant. The
sermon was preached by the Rev.
Christopher Winsehnann of Rich
Fountain, Me. At the mass meeting,
which immediately followed the high
Mass, addresses were made by Fred
P. Kenkel, K. S. G., director of the
Central Bureau of the Central Verein,
and Dr. Bake, one of the Science pro-
fessors at the School of Mines at
Rolla, Me.
Economic Problems
The subjects discussed by the dif-
ferent speakers covered a number of
questions of particular interest to the
farmers, but this initial meeting was
chiefly taken advantage o f to set
forth in outline the general lecture
scheme that has now been in progress
for two or three weeks, it was pointed
out that the economic problems that
the agriculturist has to face will be
a leading feature of the lecture
courses, economics being considered of
highest importance, not only from a
material, but from a moral and re-
ligious point of view.
Parish Organizations
The men who have been giving.the
lectures report large and enthusiastic
gatherings in all the parishes they
have so far visited and they feel
greatly encouraged by the keen inter-
est aroused anmng the Catholic farm-
ers and very many others by their
work to date. The first results of
these lectures will be parish organi-
zation, and to facilitate cooperation
and ensure success, lists are now be-
ing compiled of all the Catholic fami-
[lies in the parishes of each county
visited. These lists will enable the
committee in charge of the lecturing
tours to keep in touch with the peo-
ple and furnish them with needed in-
formation and follow-up literature.
Tile chairman and other members of
the C. U. of Me., are receiving con-
gratulations upon the inauguration of
this rural welfare movement, the
clergy and laity showing a lively in-
terest.
FR. O'CONNOR CHOSEN
NATIONAL CHAPLAIN
OF AMERICAN LEGION
(By N. C. W. C. News Service)
New Orleans, Oct. 23.The Rev. I
William P. O'Connor of Cincinnati, [
first Ohio priest ko enter the army]
following the declaration of war and 1
chaplain" of the 136th Field Artillery
of the 37th Division during the con-
flict, was elected national chaplain of
the American Legion at the fourth an-
nual convention held here last week.
Father O'Connor, who is now pas-
tor of St. Mary's church of Cincinnati.
is the present chaplain of the 107th
Calvary of the Ohio National Guard.
His election as national chaplain came
on the third ballot, his opponent for
the office being the Rev. Ezra Clem-
mons of Iowa. The Rev. Roy A. Tuck-
er of Baton Rogue withdrew his name
on the third ballot.
Father O'Connor is not the first
Catholic priest to be honored by
election as national chaplain of the
Legion. The first chaplain was the
Rev. Francis A. Kelley of Albany.
(By N. C. W. C. News Service)
Cincinnati, Oct. 23.The Rev. Wil-
llam P. O'Connor, pastor of St. Mary's
church of this city, and elected na-
tional chaplain of the American Le-
gion, is well known to the Cath-
olics of Cincinnati because of the
letters he wrote from overseas as.
chaplain of the 136th Field Artillery,]
and which were published in the Cath-
]
olic Telegraph, the official organ of
the archdiocese. Father O'Connor,
who was a lieutenant with the regi-
ment, gave Cincinnati friends of the
soldier lads a graphic description of
the life of the boys in many parts of
France and in Genoa, Milan and other
cities of Italy, which they visited. Pre-
vious to their departure overseas, Fa-
ther O'Connor was with the 136th at
amp Sheridan, Alabama. He was s
lose friend of Colonel Frederick Gal
raith, former national commander o
e American Legion.
The literary, the dramatic,, the
diplomatic, and the spiritual are so
nicely interwoven in Maurice Bar°
ing's "The Puppet Show of Memory,"
it becomes difficult to make a selec-
tion when recording the impressions
the book has made.
There is a consummate art in a
style, which is so easy and natural
it seems to be no style at all. His
book is compelling enough in interest
to fill a Sunday with nothing but.Bar-
ing. Its enthusiasm about Russia,
its records of the battles that have
been witnessed in the Russo-Japanese
war, its glimpses of diplomatic life
in France, Italy, Denmark,its vivid
pictures of German student life; o£
Eton and Oxford days give color and
liveliness to pages that hold an addi-
tional value in their literary artistry.
If memory has prompted him to se-
lect only the impressions that have
remained we are glad he did not keep
a diary. His beginning days were fill-
ed with fairies, and all the glamor of
a home life which was beautiful and
simple in its living. "There came the
moment," he says "when we joined
our sisters every morning to say our
prayers in my mother's bedroom, ev-
ery day before breakfast. They were
short and simple prayersthe "Our
Father" and one other short prayer.
Nevertheless for years the "Our Fa-
ther" was to me a mysterious and un-
intelligible formula, all the more so,
as I said it entirely by the Sound, and
not all by the sense, thinking that
"Which art in heaven" was one word
and "Thy kingdom come" another. I
never asked what it meant. I think in
some dim way I felt that, could I un-
derstand it, something of its value as
an invocation would be lost or dimin-
ished." These are the beginning of
his spiritual impressions and they are
introduced rather sparingly through-
out the pages, but when they are
gatheled together one finds out these
early ones are strengthened by "Mrs.
Christie who used to teach us Latin."
He says "I remember another book,
"Romance or Chivalry and Romance."
In it there was a story of a damsel
who was really a fairy, and a bad
fairy at that, who went into the ca-
thedral in the guise of a beautifm
princess, and when the bell rang at
the Elevation of the Host, changed
into her true shape and vanished. I
consulted Mrs. Christie as to what the
Elevation of the .Host meant, and she
gave me a clear account of what
Transsubstantiation 'eant, and she
told me about Henry VIII, the Defend-
er of the Faith, and the Reformation
and made no comment on the truth or
the untruth of the dogma. Transub-
stantiation seemed to me the most
natural thing in the world, as it al-
ways does to children, and I privately "
made up my mind that on'that point
the Reformers nmst have been mis-
taken."
Then religion remains dormant un-
til his Cambridge days and he says
"There was at Trinity and at King's
at this time, as I suppose there is at
all times, a small but highly, intellec-
tual world, of which the apex was the
mysterious Society of Apostles, who
discussed Philosophy in secert. I
skirted the fringe of. this world, and
knew some of its members. One day
one of these intellectuals explained to
me that I ought not go to Chapel, as
it was setting a bad example. Chris-
tianity was exploded as a thing of the
past; nobody believed in it really
among the young and the advanced,
but for the sake of the old-fashioned
and the unregenerate I was bidden to
set an example of sincerity and cour-
age, and soon the world would follow
suit. I remember thinking that al-
though I was much younger in years
than these intellectuals, and far in-
ferior in knowledge, brains, and wits,
no match for them in argument or in
achievement, I was none the less old-
er than they were in a particular kind
of experience. 1 am speaking of the
experience that comes from havhg
been suddenly constrained to turn
around and look at life from a differ-
ent point of view. It was not that I
had then any definite religious creed.
I seldom went to chapel, but that was
out of laziness. I seldom wen to
church in London, and never of my
own accord.
While I was at Heidelberg the re-
ligious tenets which I had kept abso-
lutely intact since childhood t without
question and without the shadow of
doubt or difficulty, suddenly one day,
without outside influence or inward
crisis, just dopped away from me, I
shed them as easily as a child loses
a first tooth. In the winter of 1893,
when I came back from Berlin, some-
one asked me why I didn't go to
church. I said it was because I didn't
believe in a Christian faith, and that
if I were ever to again I would be a
Catholic." But not until 1909 do we
find him saying "On the eve of Can-
dlemas 1909, I was received into the
Catholic Church by Father Sebastian
Bowden at the Brompten Oratory; the i
(Continued on Page 6)
