October 22, 2010

What was in the news on Oct. 21, 1960?

By Brandon A. Evans

50 Year LogoThis week, we continue to examine what was going on in the Church and the world 50 years ago as seen through the pages of The Criterion.

Here are some of the items found in the Oct. 21, 1960, issue of The Criterion:

  • Catholic Educators: Probe new ideas in school crisis
    • “WASHINGTON—Catholic educators are dusting off old proposals to offer top students a 10-year elementary and secondary course instead of the traditional 12 years. Cutting down the course is one of several possibilities being discussed, largely informally, in an effort to find ways to ease the vise of too few teachers and too many students in which many Church schools are caught today. … Other proposals … include use of teaching machines which permit pupils to work on their own, using television and tape recorders.”
  • Slated this Sunday: Record crowd expected at Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Men convention
  • Protestant group: Seeks unity with Rome
  • No need for concern over Catholic President
  • Predicts surge in bigotry
    • “NEW YORK—A fresh wave of anti-Catholicism will break throughout the nation eight days before election day, according to the executive director of the Fair Campaign Practices Committee. ‘In every campaign cursed by dirty campaigning, the worst lies always appear at the last minute,’ Bruce L. Felknor declared [on Oct. 16]. Mr. Felknor said that ‘for months now’ plans have been under way to turn ‘Reformation Sunday’—October 30—into ‘a gigantic anti-Kennedy rally.’ He said these plans are being made on ‘two levels … One level is an interdenominational association of fundamentalist churches. The other is an amalgam of hate-mongers and bigots.’ ”
  • Pope (John XXIII) urges daily Rosary
  • See need to overhaul U.S. farm legislation
  • Yugoslav bishops want rights back
  • The bond of brotherhood
    • “VATICAN CITY—‘I am Joseph, your brother,’ His Holiness Pope John XXIII said as he welcomed a delegation of 130 Jews in a special audience. Those received in audience were U.S. members of the United Jewish Appeal and the Jewish study mission under the leadership of Rabbi Herbert Friedman. The Pope told them that he had been drawn especially close to them since the days of his assignment in Istanbul, Turkey, as Apostolic Delegate.”
  • Italian bishops again urge vote against the Reds
  • English bishop warns against parochialism
    • “HARROGATE, England—There is no place today for Catholics ‘whose outlook is limited to home and parish,’ Auxiliary Bishop Thomas B. Pearson of Lancaster warned here. Addressing the annual meeting of the National Council of the Catholic Women’s League, he declared: ‘The harassed priest who wants all activity for his new church and school may as well not build it if he does not keep eyes and activity on the world scene as well because if the world is not saved in these next years for Christ, his new church and school will cease to be.’ ”

(Read all of these stories from our Oct. 21, 1960, issue by logging on to our special archives.) †

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